Unreasonable Addiction I
by Lady Russell Holmes
Summary: Octavius's mind is failing him, and he takes drastic measures to repair it, including abducting a research scientist. What follows is the most bizarre hostage situation ever. [This is based on comic canon, particularly the work penciled by H. Ramos.] [Co
1. Experimentation

**Unreasonable**

**Chapter 1: Experimentation**

By Yumegari and LRH

((Author's note: LRH here. This is the first installment of the Unreasonable Addiction, a work by myself and a very talented writer and artist, Yumegari, who I met on DeviantArt and approached as a fangirl when her Otto-centric fanfiction, _Inalienable Rights_, impressed me (See the link to her page in my profile). In subsequent conversation, the topic of role playing came up, and since it was something we both enjoyed and neither of us got enough of, we decided to start a Doctor Octopus rp, with her as Octavius in his wonderfully deranged incarnation as depicted by H. Ramos, and me as my perpetual original character, Clair Watson (It's a common name, people, there is no relation to Mary Jane.).

Within a few posts, I knew that I had found someone who truly understood that the core of role-playing is story-telling. And so here, then, is the story.))

Clair sighed, resetting her experiment for the fourth time. No matter what, she just couldn't keep the culture of brain tissue uncontaminated long enough to judge regrowth of the neurons. She was going to fail again if she couldn't get it right. Rinsing out the dishes at the sink and putting them into the autoclave, she looked out the window over the grounds of the university. It was a dull day, fitting for this close to the end of Fall quarter, and any students who were unfortunate enough to be outside were warmly bundled up, rushing from building to building. She turned away from the view and went to get a new sample from storage.

* * *

Promising. Not the building itself, that was nothing more than a standard-issue college laboratory complex, filled with secondhand equipment and pedestrian activities. And yet.... there was little to no security. Whatever there was to steal could be stolen easily and put to at least temporary use before a more permanent solution could be found.  
Outside the building, a dark shape couched and thought these things, peering inside a window. One student. She could be easily silenced. A three-pronged metal claw came up slowly, cocking so that it could shatter the glass.

* * *

Clair chose the sample with the most recent date, hoping that would make a difference, and turned back towards her workstation. Something, a movement, a shadow, made her look up, straight into the tri-fingered claw that hovered outside the window. She stared at it curiously, too shocked by its sudden appearance here, four floors up, to try and figure out what it was. This lasted all of two seconds. 

The claw drew back and punched forward, shattering the glass. Amid the shards, it snaked downward on a length of segmented tentacle, the nested segments gleaming a bluish chromium silver in the room's fluorescent light. Another joined it and a dark shape rose through the window, flowing, large and powerful, The shape set down, the light glinting off inky black hair, midnight leather and inscrutable black goggles.

More glass shattered as Clair dropped the dish in her hands and scrambled backwards, falling over in her haste to get away from the inhuman intruder. Glass cut her palms as she scrabbled backwards, hitting the wall and still trying to move farther away. She tried to scream, couldn't. There was no air in her lungs. She looked around, frantically. Her teacher had been in here just a minute ago, hadn't he? Where was he? A distant part of her mind, the part not locked up by terror, reminded her that he had left after her second failure. She was alone in here. Well, not anymore.

A neural sample on the floor. A cowering student. One door. Humming machinery. A collection of samples. The chemicals present told him experimental work was being done, here. Actual experimental work, not the simple repetition of established fact necessary in a class environment. His gaze whipped to the student again as a searing, monofilament of curiosity sliced through his thought pattern. An actuator claw reached out and grabbed her around the torso, lifting her from the floor and bringing her toward him.

"Gahahaha..." was as articulate as Clair got as the arm grabbed her, bruising her around the ribs. She strained backwards, clawing at the tentacle and trying to kick its bearer. When this proved fruitless and she stared at him, only her own reflection in his goggles stared back. "What.." she finally worked out. "What do you want?"

The stranger answered in a deep, growling voice, not with a statement of intent but with a question of his own. "What are you doing in here? What sort of tests are being conducted?" He barely moved at all, three more clawed tentacles flowing restlessly about his shadowy form as though all the energy that would translate into the normal myriad of human motion was transferred to them. The stranger remained as still as a stone as he spoke.

"I, I, I'm testing a serum to revitalize damaged neural tissue," she stuttered, swallowing convulsively. "It d- d- doesn't work yet. I've been having troubles with cont-ta-tamination." She gripped the tentacle around her ribs so tightly that her knuckles popped, trying to pry it off.

There was a long pause of breathless stillness speaking of the calm before a storm. He seemed to gaze through her. "Hnnn...." he growled. The actuators reached out, gracefully picking up more samples and vials of chemicals. They hung before her, holding said objects.

Trying to guess what he wanted, she pointed at one, a sealed vial full of a clear liquid, labeled "Zombie Juice!" in green sharpie with a drooling smiley face. "It's th-that one. That's the serum. Take it, if, if it's what you want. Please, don't hurt me."  
A creasing of the skin around the goggles inexplicably told her he'd narrowed his eyes. "They always say that, don't they?" he asked, staring through her again. The other vial was put back in a bizarrely painstaking fashion, more neural samples were taken, and everything was handed to her. The claw nudged these objects against her hands as their owner turned and headed back for the window.

She took them automatically, without paying attention to what they were. "Where are you, no! Put me down!" She kicked futilely, struggling, but somehow not dropping the samples. After all, they represented too much work to be destroyed like that. "Let me go!"

"I can't do that. Time is short, far too short for me to concoct the necessary compounds on my own. You will have to suffice, if for no other reason than your familiarity with the development of these compounds," he told her. On anyone else it would almost sound like rambling, but his rumbling voice was too hard, too purposeful. The tentacles lifted him out the window and, their claws embedding in the brickwork of the building, with stony chink sounds, carried him and his quarry up the side of the building toward the roof.

"No!" she shrieked, hoping to attract any attention, but class was in session now, and the grounds were deserted. "Let go!" She swung her free hand at him, but he was out of reach. "Let me go!" An irrelevant thought popped into her head: At least she had an excuse for not finishing the experiment today.

"If you don't stop that squawking, I will silence you myself," he stated coldly. The journey to the roof became a journey across many such rooftops, the tentacles smoothly and effortlessly carrying them from one to the next, ceaselessly moving, as though anticipating and calculating the heights of the buildings, the distances between them, all the while slipping them in and out of shadows.

She shut up promptly, going so far as to clamp her free hand over her mouth. She'd heard of the man, who hadn't? And she'd been screaming at him. She clenched her eyes shut, both out of a fear of the vertiginous heights that they were crossing and a desire to avoid seeing her own death coming.

The actuators continued carrying them across the rooftops, and their owner remained silent, his features expressionless. At this point, it took an inordinate amount of concentration to keep them on course, to keep them moving. Keep moving.... The world narrowed to the buildings and the actuators and their destination. Keep moving.... A wayward thought, prompted by the sight of one of the buildings, almost made its way to the fore of his concentration, but he clenched his teeth and turned his concentration entirely upon the movement of the actuators, almost feeling their progress, the twist and pull of thousands of servos, the claws gripping brick or stone or metal. Heavy concentration of that kind pulled and scraped at every neuron, but it was preferable to the chaos. It was either that or he start talking again and he did not want to do _that_. Things were at a precipice. One wrong move would send him plummeting. He could not allow that when he was so close to a solution.

As time passed and no further violence threatened, beyond the bruising grip of the actuator, Clair re-opened one eye, then the other, and watched her captor nervously. This silence from him was frightening, although perhaps not more frightening than threats or ranting might have been. "Where, er, where are you taking me?" she asked tentatively.

Grating. Even the sound of the girl's voice was grating, though she'd pitched it quietly, hesitantly, its soft sound almost lost in the wind that blew past them at this height. Nevertheless, it served to puncture his concentration. His head whipped back to look at her, his hair swinging in long, inky strands about his face, the wind taking them where it would. The actuators wavered, slowed, one missed its next destinations and they both lurched under the sudden movement.

She screamed involuntarily at the lurch, clutching the tentacle as a safety line even though, intellectually, she knew that if she was falling, so was he. "Gah, so high," she breathed, looking down on accident.

_Don't remind me, you stupid girl!_ He growled in his throat, a low rumbling sound, as the actuator scrabbled for purchase and their movement continued, though not quite as smoothly as before. The danger of falling had scrambled his concentration again, and he struggled to put one claw in front of the other. Their destination neared, and he began what looked like a tricky descent to a window one claw had snaked out and opened.

She began to shake as they entered the building. _His lair_, a melodramatic part of her mind murmured. She had read far too many gothic novels. The kidnapped heroine never, _ever_ got out of the villain's lair in one piece with her sanity intact. It was against the rules. But this is real life, insisted a saner part of her mind. Isn't it?

It was strangely steadying to feel the floor beneath his feet. He very nearly dropped both the girl and her samples, but managed to instead push her against a wall and release her, one hand almost unconsciously stealing to his head, fingers twitching against his hairline, his gaze blank. He tried to gather his thoughts, tried to order them, to come up with a plan. Everything needed a plan. Everything needed direction, and with a hostage, that need was even greater. _Think! It used to __come so easily! Stop wheezing like an emphysemic and think_!

She shrank against the wall, clutching her handful of samples to herself like a defense, and watched him. He looked... confused, which in turn confused her. She shot glances at the window they had come in, and at the room's door, judging if, maybe, just maybe, she could make it to one or the other. But at the moment, her legs were too unsteady to try such a thing. She sank to the floor. Think, Clair. This is bad. Really _really_ bad. And this train of thought isn't helping.

Eventually Octavius looked up, his gaze finding the girl and staring at her as though he'd never seen her before in his life and was wondering why she was in his home. There was a pause. All around him, screens glowed dully with static and all manner of scientific equipment crowded for space on tables and shelves. His gaze flicked down to the vials she clutched in her hands. Slowly, he reached back with one actuator and closed the window. "You. Girl. Prepare one of the neural samples. I want to examine this serum of yours and then we shall test it, as many times as is necessary until it works. The price of failure is high." With that, he turned slightly, his fingers coming to rest at the top button of the longcoat's high collar, unfastening it with quick, hard movements.

Still shaking, she jumped to obey, spreading out the samples on a clear space on the nearest table. Her hands steadied as she slipped into the more focused frame of mind that always seemed to accompany experimentation. Pulling a (miraculously) unbroken syringe out of her lab coat pocket, she pulled the cap off with her teeth and drew out a tiny quantity of the serum from the sealed vial. Holding that, she opened the cover of one of the samples of donated neural tissues and injected the serum into the growth tissue, and then turned to him. "Do you have a culture incubator?"

One actuator claw waved in the direction of the device in question, almost hidden in the jumble of machines and tools that covered a nearby table. He'd unbuttoned the longcoat completely and had peeled it off, revealing an almost absurdly ordinary black button-down shirt and trousers. His hair, no longer hidden by the coat's high collar, hung around his shoulders and neck in long, starkly black strings. Almost immediately, he began to attack the buttons of the shirt, as well, brows furrowed over the edges of his dark goggles.

She put the sample in the incubator and stepped back, wishing she had her notes. It was somewhere in the stage she had just completed that contamination always happened. For all she knew, the serum could be a complete success, but if it required such absolutely controlled conditions, it wouldn't be viable for human testing. You can't sterilize a human brain. But now she'd have to wait and see if this time, this time was different. And if it wasn't, _the price of failure is high_. She looked over at the doctor, who seemed only slightly less imposing without the billowing coat. "How did you find out," she asked quietly. "About my experiments?"

He looked at her, his eyes, as always, unreadable behind the black goggles he wore like a bizarre pair of bulbous pince nez. He'd half unbuttoned the shirt, revealing a grey harness that resembled nothing so much as a scuba-diver's BCD, that the tentacles must have been attached to. In the half-light of the monitors, she could see the silhouette of wavy strands of long hair curling ever so slightly against the smooth line of a sleek neck. "Nothing's difficult to find if you know where to look," he stated gruffly. "I simply looked for work being done as regards neural integrity." His head turned slightly, indicating that his gaze had switched to the culture incubator. "Watch that more closely." One actuator snaked toward her, its sharp, gleaming claws closing around the vial of serum as he continued to unbutton the shirt.

She looked away as he continued to disrobe, watching through the incubator's small window. The change she was looking for was minute, whether for good or bad. And after a further fifteen minutes, she knew it. "No!" she shouted, slamming her fist on the table. The sample in the incubator had turned its all-too-familiar shade of grey, rather than the living pink she was hoping for. Forgetting where she was, she yanked open the incubator and pulled out the sample, examining it closely under a microscope nearby. "It's a different contamination," she concluded. "It's not the sample being contaminated, it's the serum. I just don't have the precision to keep it isolated." She reached out for her notes, and, not finding them, remembered where she was. She paled, looking at the doctor in trepidation.

The first thing she noticed upon having looked up was that he'd moved closer, presumably to see this sample for himself, The second thing she noticed was that he was completely bare-chested. Completely. Somewhere along the line, the actuators and their complex harness had been removed. He clutched the serum bottle in one hand. He drew closer, and bent to peer into the viewfinder himself, hair slipping down over his shoulders to hang, almost obscuring the device from view. A second passed. Then another. He moved slightly, looking between the serum and the microscope. One could almost hear the gears, a multitude of them, spinning in his head.

She edged backwards, glancing to see where he'd left the actuators. The experiment forgotten, she spied the door and took another step away from him, then another, and then she bolted for it.

There was a loud THUNK and, a split second later, something closed round her ankle, hard and sharp and cold. Metal.  
She stumbled over the suddenly-immobilized foot and feel, barely catching herself with her hands before her chin hit the floor. She twisted, trying to get away, and only succeeded in hurting herself.

He'd been leaning against the table for a moment, head turned to look over his shoulder at her. Now he approached, footsteps heavy against the floor until he stopped before her, bending and grabbing the front of her shirt, catching the lapels of her labcoat as well, and dragged her upwards to meet his hidden gaze. "Imbecile!" he snarled, his grip twisting the fabric in his fists. "You won't escape that easily! Or _at all_, for that matter!" One hand gripped her neck, fingers hot against her skin, gripping almost hard enough to hide the fact that they shook, though with rage or something less easily explained, it wasn't clear.

She choked, struggling desperately to get free, get a breath, anything. Her hands reached instinctively, one clawing at his, the other reaching for his eyes to hurt him, distract him, make him drop her. Blackness threatened the center of her vision, and all she could see where his blackly hidden eyes.

One of his hands had immediately gone to remove her clawing fingernails from his wrist and wasn't there to intercept the other hand as it lashed toward his face, tangling in swinging black hair, beating against his head and, after an instant, yanking free of his hair and smacking against his face, her wildly scrabbling fingers pulling free the goggles that covered his eyes.  
He jerked backward, both hands flying to his face as he hissed with pain. Immediately he lunged forward, searching the floor for them.

She fell to her knees, gasping gratefully and holding her bruised throat. When she saw his goggles on the ground by her foot, she snatched them up, clutching them while he searched.

Desperately, he searched across the floor, hair swinging as he moved, his breath loud, now. He stopped, turning toward where he figured she still was, his eyes squeezed shut. "Fool! I don't have time for this! You have them, don't you! Hand them over!" He lunged forward and missed, hands out, searching for her.

She scrambled back, knocking against something. She looked up to see that it was a floor lamp. Thinking quickly, she turned it on and scooted behind it, trusting in any defense at all. "Stay away from me," she warned him, voice cracked and shaking.  
He hissed with pain again and growled, turning his head away from the light, hands clenching into fists as he crouched on all fours on the floor. A moment passed, then he stood slowly, one hand still balled up in a fist, the other coming up slowly toward his face. It shook visibly as his fingers covered his eyes and he seemed a little unsteady on his feet. He appeared to listen for her location. "Give them to me, girl, and I might let you live."

She held perfectly still, weighing her options, and then held the goggles out towards him, finally tossing them so they landed against his feet. "Let me go," she pleaded softly, her throat feeling like gravel.

He bent to retrieve them, paused, and sank forward, ending up on his knees on the floor. He'd managed to grasp the eyewear, but his hands refused to move and when they did, they moved clumsily, wavering almost drunkenly. He leaned forward, his hair almost obscuring his face from view as his hands finally came up, pressing the goggles against his face. The world swayed dizzily around him for a moment, righted itself, and became distant. Again. That maddeningly disconnected distance, as though he were no longer actually in his body but rather viewing and hearing his surroundings with a screen and speakers, feeling things in much the same way as he usually felt things with his actuators. Fingers stretched before his eyes and it took him a moment to realize they were his. He stopped again.

She watched him fumble with the goggles, her brows knit. He looked drunk, or exhausted. She looked at the door again, and the actuator still around her ankle, and back at him. Hesitantly, not believing that she was actually asking this of _this man_, she said "Are you alright?"

His head came up. He looked at her from behind those shadowed eyepieces, his breath heavy. His hand came up almost numbly to his head again. "Time..." he said, his voice dry but still growling, "...is of the essence." He hauled himself to his feet, swayed, and stepped toward her. "I obviously cannot do this on my own," he ground out after a moment. His head came up and he looked directly at her and took a breath. Almost as though forcing into gear a conceptual machine that had lain dormant for years, he continued. "If you do this.... your experiment, your findings, will finally be correct."

She stood up, though it didn't put her at any less of a disadvantage. He still towered over her. She stayed behind the lamp, as if it posed any barrier. "Why is time so important?" she asked carefully.

There was a pause. His face had returned to its normal expressionless state. "You noticed, haven't you? Signs of neurotransmitter imbalance." He moved his gaze to the culture incubator and the microscope, seeming to stare through them instead of at them. "Neural integrity is decreasing, for whatever reason."

She cocked her head. "You want me to help you? Help you fix whatever's going wrong in your head. The serum'll do that, yeah. If it works." She looked past at the microscope as well. "But I can't get it to work." She looked at her hands, which were shaking. "Delivery has to be more precise than I can manage by hand. I need a micro-surgery set-up, or something like that."

She skirted around him to the microscope, looking through it. "I think the problem is the myelin sheath, on the axon of the neuron. I think the serum degrades it too quickly. Maybe I need to deliver it directly to the soma, but I don't know of any way to do that with the tools I have available."

He looked back at the actuators, one of which still had her foot in its grasp. It released her ankle and coiled inward on itself slightly. He looked at them for a few beats, as though coming to a decision, then walked a few paces toward them. They rose up on their claws and came to meet him, picking their way along the floor until they hung over him, then dropped slowly toward him and he reaches out to grasp the body of the harness, the arms stepping round him as he shrugged it onto his torso, fastening it. He was facing away from her, and she could see his hair fall over either side of his neck and face as his head bent forward. There was a strange metallic puncturing sound. He shuddered visibly.

She cringed at the sound, and looked back at the samples that she had left. Two more. "I think I've got the problem now," she said, half-confidently. "The serum is degrading the myelin sheath of the neuron, letting in immediate infection. Unlike blood, neurons have no defense other than their sheath. If we can apply the serum to the soma and only the soma, no chance for infection." She looked up again. "All I need is one successful sample population of regenerated neurons from the patient, and they can be reintroduced into the patient, where they will replicate, spreading the serum like a virus. It's all sound," she said defensively, reliving old arguments. "I just need the tools."

Throughout all this, he stood, still facing away from her, his head tilted back, arms dangling at his sides and actuators curled slightly around him. He appeared to be concentrating, though on what it was difficult to tell. Eventually his head dropped forward again, and he turned to look at her, the actuators snaking slowly around him as he moved. "Then this is the only way," he said, walking slowly toward her and the equipment. He stopped, looking down at the vial of serum and the samples and the microscope.

This time, she stood her ground, instead of backing away from him. "What, you're going to do it? Do you know what to look for?" She may have feared him, but she'd rather have the experiment a success.

"You will show me what to look for," was his reply. A reply that brooked no argument, no dissension. One actuator picked up the vial, another the tissue sample, while the other two cleared away more cluttered machinery and tools and equipment to reveal a second microscope array, one with a monitor screen.

Nodding and biting her lip, Clair turned on the second array, with its monitor, and prepared the second sample before sliding it to Octavius. "Your microscopes are better than the ones the lab has," she commented, trying to maintain her confidence. "Here, put this under there, and look for a good neuron. It looks like a barbell with fur on. Find one as intact as you can." She pulled out a slim black case from her lab-coat and opened it, drawing out a hair-fine pipette with a large, bead-like grip. "Have you got one yet?"

He'd produced a wheeled stool from somewhere and was now seated on it, the slide in the microscope and his gaze riveted to the monitor. The display moved slowly, stopped. A reasonably healthy example of a neuron dominated the screen, its dendrites pale, delicate tendrils that extended across the lower right hand corner of the screen.

"Perfect," she said happily, and handed him the micro-pipette. "Draw some serum into that, carefully. It's very delicate, and then touch the tip to the soma, that's the big end with the nucleus, you can see it." She pointed the screen, where the nucleus showed murkily inside the bulb-like head. "The pipette has a cellular tip, so move slowly with it. I only have one with me." Unconsciously, she rested a hand on his shoulder as she watched him work, her attention trained on the screen.

One actuator (a right-hand one, she noticed) carefully took the micro-pipette and, bracing its length against the table, dipped the claw toward the vial, drawing the serum from it with painstaking slowness. It moved carefully to the microscope, and closed in on the slide with almost agonizing slow deliberateness. Millimetre by millimetre, it poked the end of the micropipette into the field of the microscope. Beads of sweat stood out on Octavius' forehead. His brow furrowed. His hands gripped the table and still the pipette inched its way ever closer to the soma, the actuator still, nothing moving but its claw tips, infinitesimal bit by infinitesimal bit. The beads of sweat became tiny rivulets. His gaze remained fixed on the screen as he leaned forward, hair slipping over his neck, his hands still gripping the table.

"Relax," she breathed reflexively, as much to herself as to him. "It's easier to hold it steady if you're relaxed. Steady, steady." She forgot everything about the situation. She was back in the University lab, Octavius was nothing more than an undergrad genetics major, and the cells in question were the only things important here.

The tip of the micropipette touched against the soma, its tiny dose of serum flowing into it. It retracted smoothly, the actuator retracting its claw into is housing and resting on the table. Octavius, however didn't move as he stared up at the screen.

Clair grinned as the neuron shifted against the background of dead cells, grew slightly, rejuvenating before their eyes. "Yes," she hissed triumphantly. "We did it!" She let go of his shoulder and did a momentary victory dance in the tiny space of clear floor before coming back to stare at the screen. Near the treated neuron, another was beginning to revive, and then another. The revitalization spread across the screen. "It works, it works!" She turned to hug Octavius in her jubilations, and froze.

If he even noticed her activity he made no comment on it, still staring at the screen. "We need a sample of neural tissue from myself, next?" was all he said, his gaze not moving. Perhaps it was the lighting, but the black of his hair seemed to stand out against the pale colour of his skin even more.

She swallowed. "Yeah. That's done under full anesthetic. I can do it, I've observed the procedure, but I've never actually..." She shrugged. "I'm only a student." She looked around. He may have had enough tools in her to make the lab researcher in her drool, but he certainly didn't have the equipment she needed for this. "There's stuff I need, that you probably don't have."  
He finally tore his gaze away from the screen where the miraculous cellular revitalization continued unheeded and turned to look at her. "What exactly do you need?"

She rolled her eyes back in her head, thinking. "I'd need an anaesthesiologist, a sub-cerebral drill, and a macro-syringe." She shook her head. "This is ridiculous. I can't perform this type of procedure. I'm not a licensed doctor. I'm just a med student. I don't graduate until spring. I don't even have a hospital internship yet, because I've been working for Dr. Mitchells ever since I came up with this."

While she said this, he stood, approaching until he towered over her, looking down at her. He remained still and, while he didn't seem quite as blatantly imposing while clad only in his trousers and his actuators, the sight was still enough to make most people lose whatever they were thinking about.

Which is exactly the effect it had on her. She shut her mouth absently, staring at him, wide-eyed. She backed up a step, almost tripping over stuff on the floor.

"And what do you suggest I do?" he asked, the tiniest hint of sarcasm lacing his tone. "Check myself into the nearest hospital? Barring that, would you be capable of coercing the necessary experts into doing this?"

"N-no," she said, stuttering once again. "I don't know what you should do. I don't have enough hands to do this surgery by myself." All the confidence from the successful experiment had fled in the time it took him to stand up, leaving her weak-kneed and trembling once again. It didn't help matters that she was barely even eye-level with his chest, forcing her to look up uncomfortably far too see his face. She felt like a child.

There was a long pause in which he appeared to be thinking, coming to a decision. It was obviously a decision he didn't like, as his expression grew darker and darker. A barely audible growl could be heard, rumbling in his throat.

Eventually he turned his head to one side, looking off into the distance, and sighed. "There's nothing for it," he growled quietly. "Under any other circumstance, I wouldn't even entertain such an idea. But there is no other way." He looked down at her. "You will have to use these. I'm sure you'll have enough hands, then." A humourless smirk flickered across his features.  
She looked at him, and then at the arms. "Them? I, I can't use them. They're not... I don't know how." Feeble excuse, she knew, but they terrified her. And besides. Would she end up like him, insane and dangerous?

One claw came up and grabbed her shirt front again, pulling her forward. "No excuses! There is no time for excuses and hesitation!" He took a deep breath, apparently forcing himself into a calmer state. "I will ... _teach_ you," he finally ground out.

She stared at him, willing herself to stay as calm as she could. "Alright," she said, seeing no other choice. She seized pride in the fact that she kept her voice from shaking, but she remembered that nasty little puncture sound the arms had made when he put them back on. "Tell me what I need to do."

He made a short huffing sound that almost sounded amused. "The first thing you're going to have to do is take off your shirt." He stepped back to afford her more space, and stood by the microscope array.

She blinked at him. "No," she said bluntly, wrapping her arms around her chest.

This brought him up short. Had his eyes been visible, one would have seen him blinking heavily. Then his brows met in a heavy scowl over the rims of his goggles. He growled again, baring his teeth before snarling an answer: "The connectivity points require a direct connection to the wearer, which means _no_ clothing can be worn under the harness, so TAKE OFF YOUR SHIRT!"

Nodding hesitantly, she slipped out of her lab coat, then looked down while she pulled her sweater up and over her head. Turning bright red, she struggled with her bra for a moment before it, too, was discarded. Not looking at him, she covered herself with her hands. "Now what?"

During this disrobing, he'd glanced in her direction, almost unconsciously, and one eyebrow had flickered upward appreciatively before he realized what he was doing and looked away quickly. Once she'd covered herself up, he looked back at her. He unfastened the harness again, a clicking sound causing him to shudder as the connective needles retracted. He regarded the harness, then her, noting the fact that he was possibly three times her size.

"That's not going to fit me," she said judiciously, looking at the harness and not him, trying to fight away the blush that wasn't staying confined to her face. She had to be mature about this. Just her luck that the first man to see her. . . . She banished that train of thought. "Can it be . . . adjusted, somehow?"

He fixed her with a stare that could be _felt_ through the goggles. "I don't usually loan them out, you know," he stated heavily. He looked about the place until one tentacle reached out and snagged a length of pliable cord. "This will have to do," he said.  
"How, how do they work?" she asked, staring at the harness, and at the tiny bleeding points on Octavius's skin.  
He walked toward her again, holding the actuator harness in one hand and the cord in the other. "They work through a direct physical connection to the spinal cord," he replied, lifting the harness to fit it around her. "Which, I'm certain you realize is the most efficient way to do it with present technology."

She put her arms through the harness, touching it as little as necessary. "Oh," she said. "Okay." The information was hardly helpful; she still didn't know what to expect.

He tied the cord round her torso and shoulders, fastened the harness, and tightened the cord so that it was more or less brought almost completely in contact with her skin. A warm vibrating sensation like an electrical current made itself felt. An instant later, a series of white-hot punctures speared into the skin of her back.

Unprepared, she screamed and arched her back in response, trying to throw the pain-causing harness off. She fell to her hands and knees, biting her tongue to keep from crying out again as she tried to adjust to the sensation.

He stood silently, watching her, an unreadable expression on his face. He made no move to help her, yet he said nothing to mock or insult her, gave no orders. He simply waited.

She stayed there, gasping, until the pain receded to a steady burn up and down her spine, then pushed herself up. The arms were heavy, not helping, but then one touched the floor, supporting the weight of the other three and keeping them from dragging at her raw back. She stared at it. "Did I do that?" Another rose when she moved her hand to brush hair away from her face.

He watched as she acclimated herself to them, one hand almost unconsciously reaching back to find the stool and pulling it toward him. He sat, still watching her intently as she acclimated herself to the actuators.

She closed her eyes, feeling out the new sensations. She could feel them there, like four more arms. She opened her eyes and brought the upper two up in front of her, extending the claws and examining them. She put her own hands down at her sides, reached out, and picked up various things from the tables, just picking them up and setting them down. Her first few tries were clumsy, but her actuator-to-eye co-ordination improved until she could pick up even the small micropipette and slide it back into its case. "Incredible," she breathed.

His head cocked slightly to one side, he continued watching her, his expression strangely intent. He'd never seen this from an outside perspective, after all. So that's what it looks like... He blinked and shook his head as if to clear it. This wasn't the time for introspection. He stood and crossed the room to a cabinet of what she recognized as a miscellany of medical supplies. Stopping, he looked over his shoulder at her, seeing she still knelt on the floor, testing her co-ordination with them. "You'd best make sure you can stand with those on," he said gruffly.

She nodded, and got her feet under her, but she could only stand erect with one of the actuators planted on the floor. The four of them together probably weighed about as much as she did. She stepped forward, accustomizing herself to the three-beat step required to move. First the actuator, then her feet. The other lower actuator joined in, making it even easier. She went over and joined Octavius at the medical cabinet, noting with some surprise just how comprehensive an assortment he had. She picked a few items out. "This is the tissue syringe I need, and the anesthetic drugs. No drill..." She looked around the cluttered room, hoping the item in question might appear from somewhere.

That humourless smirk reappeared on his features and he walked away a little unsteadily, though whether that was from his apparent condition or from the bizarre case of something resembling "sea legs" that she now noticed one had to have while wearing these things, was unclear. He stopped at another table crowded with what looked like computer parts and retrieved something that looked like the world's smallest power drill. "This will have to suffice," he said.

She took it from him and examined it critically. The bit was hair-fine, which was a little larger than she would have liked, but it couldn't be helped, and it was long enough. "Right," she said, only a little nervous. She spotted an autoclave in a corner, and put the drill bit and the syringe into it, then looked around. "Am I supposed to do this here?"

"There is nowhere else," he said. Then he looked as though a thought hit him. "This way," he said, leaving the room and walking into what looked like a kitchen. A disused and somewhat bare yet disorderly kitchen, but a kitchen nonetheless. It didn't look as though food was cooked in it very often, if at all. He walked up to the table and moved the books and papers and whatnot from it, relocating them mostly to the floor.

Clair followed him, looking around the room. It was clean enough, if not sterile. This surgery had to be precise, but it wasn't difficult or prolonged. Human error, rather than infection, was the likely road to failure. "We should wipe down the table with a disinfectant. Alcohol, if nothing else." She looked at the two actuators now hovering on either side of her head. "I could sterilize them with it too, since they're going to help me."

"I doubt I have enough," he said and left again, returning a few moments later with a bottle of rubbing alcohol, handing it over. He pulled the chair across the room and returned to the table, leaning on it briefly before looking up at her again, watching the actuators as they snaked slowly around her as she moved.

The bottle was mostly full, so she was able, just barely, to both clean the table and two of the actuators with it, as well as her own hands, with some left over. Holding them up where they wouldn't touch anything, she went back into the lair and got the anesthetic and its paraphernalia. Coming back, she nodded to Octavius and gestured at the table. "On your stomach, with your head to the side. Face me."

He favoured her with an unreadable yet slightly affronted look before climbing onto the table and lying down prone, his head nearest her and turned to the side so that he could see her. He shifted, made himself a little more comfortable, and shivered slightly at the cold table against his bare skin. His hair draped onto the table around his head, curling slightly at the ends. The tiny red punctures on his back had already stopped bleeding. He shifted again, putting an arm under his head and then lay still, waiting.

With her own hands and one actuator, she set up the anesthetic in its pump, checked the concentration, and slipped the mask over his face. "It shouldn't take too long," she said, her mind running on overdrive. This had to be the strangest kidnapping situation ever. "Count backwards from ten, slowly."

She thought she could almost see his eyes blinking, a fluttering of black eyelashes behind the goggles. A tiny patch of steam had formed on the inside of the mask as he breathed. "Hnnn...." He took an almost involuntary sighing breath. "Ten..." he mumbled. "Nine... eight... seven... six...." He twitched and his eyes flew open. "Why am I even trusting you?" he suddenly asked, and moved to get up, but the anesthetic was already taking hold and he flopped back down onto the table, his breathing now heavy. One hand shot out and grabbed hold of her wrist. "There's nothing that'll guarantee you won't kill me while I lie here helpless .... Take this thing off, we'll find... another.... another way.... won't ... helpless.... " his hand slipped slowly from her wrist and fell, his arm dangling over the edge of the table. "Can't ... no ... control...." His voice trailed off into mumbling and then a sighing whisper before he fell silent, his breathing slow and regular, his eyes closed.

She put his hand back up on the table, checking his pulse to see that she had got the dosage right. Steady and strong, if a little faster than she might have liked. Stepping away from his side, she reached back into the lair and fetched the drill and the things from the autoclave, reassembling the former with a sterile actuator. With her own hand and an alcohol-soaked swab, she brushed back the dark hair from his temple, and an actuator brought the drill to bear on the thin bone there. She took a deep breath to steady herself, though the actuators didn't seem to need it, and turned on the drill. A tiny scent of scorched flesh rose up as it bit through skin, then bone. She made infinitely slow progress, and pulled back the instant that the resistance of bone was overcome, meaning she was through. Slowly, she eased the drill bit back out, set it aside, and picked up the syringe. The lower actuator that wasn't helping her stand snaked over to check that the anesthetic pump was still doing its job, and to adjust the level.

With as much slowness as before, the actuator slid the needle into the drilled hole and took the minuscule sample that was the entire point of this half of the procedure. Injecting it immediately into an empty sample dish, she turned down the flow of sleep gas. A band-aid covered the tiny puncture on Octavius's temple. He would wake quite soon.


	2. Interruption

**Unreasonable**

**Chapter 2: Interruption**

By Yumegari and LRH

The road to consciousness was apparently a long and hard one, as he sighed and stirred sluggishly, then fell still again. He made a quiet Mmffh... sound and managed to bring one hand up to the side of his head, but fell still again, the hand resting against his face. The place was silent save for the ticking of a clock somewhere, and so the sound she heard next was disproportionately loud, and yanked her attention to a point behind her, where she was treated to an extreme close-up of a red and black and silver ... _thing_ that spoke cheerfully: "Hey, you already knocked him out _for_ me. Looks like half my job here is done!"

Startled, she spun around, the arms arching to fend off the sudden intruder. "Spider-Man!" she gasped, backing away from the hero, who was hanging upside down from the ceiling. She bumped into the table, and one actuator steadied it before it could teeter and tip.

"The one and only," came the reply as he righted himself, landing soundlessly on the floor. "Though usually that's his line," he continued, straightening and indicating Octavius' sluggishly moving form. "And usually the hostages are a little happier to see me." He shrugged and approached the table, hands cocked to possibly bind the other with webbing. "Still, I'm not gonna look a gift villain in the mouth. Just step aside and I'll tie him up and drag him out of here. Hey, maybe they'll even let you keep those arms as a souvenir."

Octavius' eyes flew open at the sound of his enemy's voice, though in his drugged state, he couldn't focus on its owner no matter _how_ garishly clad the little pipsqueak was. He struggled to rise, breathing hard in an attempt to clear his head, pushing himself up on shaking arms.

Clair turned back to her patient, helping him up to a sitting position. "Careful, now." Almost incidentally, the arms spread out in a loose wall between him and Spider-Man.

This brought the arachnid in question up a little short and he stopped, his loose-spined posture the very picture of blinking confusion. He pointed. "I think you have things a little confused, lady. Your line's _Oh, help, save me, Spider-man_, and I drag the bad guy, who kidnapped you, in case you forgot, out of here, and you go home."

"Is there no place that's safe from your incessant prattling?!" Octavius demanded, shaking off Clair's hands and fixing a glare on Spider-man.

Clair looked over her shoulder at Spider-Man. "I know this is an odd situation, but we're in the middle of something." She looked around for the sample and found that an actuator was still holding it. "I'm going to get this started. About an hour, and I can complete the procedure. Can we have that much time?"

Apparently that request completely derailed Spider-man's train of thought. One finger in the air, he looked about to say something, but stopped. He looked about to say something else, and stopped. "What're you, his doctor?" he finally asked, all attempts at his usual heroism lost in the confusion.

She considered her answer. "He brought me here to help him with something. He helped me first, I'm helping him." She walked past Spider-Man to take the sample out to the microscope in the lab, getting out the micropipette once more. "And I'm not done yet." She resisted the sudden urge to add "please come back later," and merely giggled instead, slightly hysterical.

This left Spider-man alone in the kitchen of his worst enemy, one hand still up. He turned to look at Octavius. Octavius, who'd come round almost completely by now, grinned an evil grin. "Well," he said, his hands curling round the edge of the table, "If I'm forced to wait for this procedure to be completed, I might as well take care of a few things while I've _got the time_!" With that he lunged forward, throwing himself bodily toward Spider-man. Spidey, however, would have seen this coming from a mile away, Spider-senses or no, and webbed Octavius, turning and continuing the other man's momentum for him and sending him crashing over the breakfast bar island and against the sink and cupboards, sending the pots and pans that every kitchen seems to grow independently of its owner's habits clattering to the floor around him.

Leaving the sample under the microscope, Clair darted back into the kitchen at the noise and inserted herself between them without thinking. Protect the patient. "I just drilled a hole in his skull!" she growled at Spider-Man. "Could you avoid giving him a concussion?"

"Lady, get out of the way!" Spider-man hollered, just as Octavius roared from behind her, "Stand aside, girl!" A steak knife whipped past her head, missing it by millimeters and flipping her hair upward. Spider-man dodged it and sent a string of webbing darting past her.

She ducked, but the actuators struck out in both directions, blindly. "Stop it!" she screamed at them both.

Spider-man dodged, the actuator never even coming close to hitting him, and Octavius dropped to the floor, narrowly avoiding a second hole in his skull. He climbed over the kitchen island and grabbed her from behind, his arms coming up under hers and crossing in front of her chest. "Hold still," he hissed in her ear. "This is the only way I can get my bearings and there's no guarantee it'll even work..."

She held still, her feet off the ground. "What are you doing?" she hissed back.

"You don't know how to use these things. I do...." he panted. Indeed, the actuators, now moving seemingly of their own accord, struck out at Spider-man with blinding speed, punching holes in the walls and floor as the blue-and red figure leaped and ducked. Octavius suddenly yanked her to one side as he dodged another stream of webbing.

Startled by the jerk, she extended one arm to catch them. It felt very, very odd to have him controlling them. She could feel it, like a limb gone to sleep. Almost, but not quite, painful. Pulled around like a puppet, she watched the two men fight, covering her head with her arms to protect herself.

Spider-man back-flipped out of the way of another actuator strike, but misjudged the close confines of the room and fetched up against the wall. Another actuator claw caught his ankle and lifted him, slamming him against the wall. He scrabbled for a grip on the metal tentacle and was slammed against the ceiling. Octavius backed up, pulling her with him, and threw his enemy against the floor, the actuator releasing him. Another actuator arrowed toward Spider-man's throat but he rolled out of the way at the last minute. A third cracked against the red-and-black-clad skull. But the fourth missed entirely and Spider-man grabbed it, swinging himself through the air on it even as it whipped through the air in an attempt to dislodge him. A web-line shot at the ceiling corrected Spider-man's course, and he sailed toward them in a flying kick.

Clair threw up her arms, and the upper two actuators, to fend off Spider-Man's kick. She couldn't fight him; he was Spider-Man, the _hero_. She tried to bring the actuators back under her control, backing her and Octavius into a corner.

As the actuators whipped upward at Clair's instinctive motion, one of them slapped Spider-man out of the air. Octavius tightened his grip on her, his arms almost squeezing the breath from her. "Don't interfere!" he hissed, his breath loud in her ear. It grew even louder and faster as he reasserted his control and the actuators shot forward, picking up the dazed Spider-man and once again slamming him against the floor where he lay still. Octavius laughed, a stringy, wheezing sound, and the actuators rose into the air, presumably for the kill.

"No!" Clair gasped. She concentrated on keeping the actuators away from the downed Spider-Man, focusing on them, digging her fingernails into Octavius's arms. "No, _don't_!"

The actuators wavered, their claws snapped, and then they curled inward. Octavius twitched, a choked sound escaping him, and his legs apparently went out from under him, as he dropped to the floor, still hanging onto her.

She pressed her advantage, bringing the actuators close enough that she could actually hold onto them with her flesh and blood arms, not daring to even think about anything else. She was breathing almost as hard as he was, she discovered.

His arms slipped from around her and a thump could be heard behind her. Silence descended again in the ruined kitchen, Spider-man's still form crumpled in a corner and chunks of plaster and wood littering the floor and the smashed table. A siren could be heard far away.

She uncurled slowly, letting go of the actuators and stretching them out. Immediately, she turned around to check on Octavius.

He lay in a heap on the floor, pale and still, chest heaving. Giving no indication that he knew she'd turned to look at him, he seemed unconscious. The fact that she'd regained control of the actuators seemed to attest this.

She paled, and then reclaimed some of her composure, moving him into a position where he could breathe easier and propping him up against a chunk of the ex-table before moving over to check on Spider-Man, who was still unconscious. She didn't dare move him, because she had no idea if anything had been broken while Octavius bashed him about. But his pulse was strong, and he was breathing alright.

Octavius stirred, forcing his eyes open. After taking in his surroundings, seeing the girl kneeling over Spider-man, his own actuators curled almost protectively around her, he allowed a sigh to escape him. "You're almost more trouble than you're worth, girl...." he muttered.

Her head shot up, and she smiled in relief to see him awake already. "Are you okay?" she asked, coming back to his side. "I was worried that I'd hurt you, somehow."

Again, he shot her an unreadable look, a puzzled one, maybe. "By wresting control from me like that, you nearly overloaded my synapses." He sighed again and rubbed his head, his hand slipping into his hair and pushing it back. He turned his head away again, as though gathering his thoughts. It looked like more and more of a task to do so every time. A beat, and then he hauled himself to his feet. "Let's get this done and over with," he growled quietly, staggering out of the room and to the laboratory.

She looked back at Spider-Man. "I've got to help him first," she said, hanging back. "You hurt him, and I can't tell if anything's broken or not because I don't know if he's even human or not." She felt very overwhelmed by all of this; superheros and actuators and brain surgery.

If he answered, she didn't hear it. Octavius stumbled into the lab, forcing himself to walk more steadily, to keep a straighter path. He wasn't going to stagger about. Finding another chair in a far corner of the room, he dropped into it, intent to wait. Suddenly, he found he could muster patience again, though part of his mind reckoned that was simply because he was too tired to be impatient. The chair was an overstuffed leather one, and he could remember sitting in it and maybe reading, a long time ago when the mood to do such things still used to take him. A vague thought wondering when the last time he'd read anything was slid into his mind, but slid out again just as easily as he closed his eyes and waited, listening to the soft, random sounds around him. He wondered if anything about his thinking would change once this neural restorative was injected. He wondered if he'd even notice.

Clair made Spider-Man as comfortable as she could, and then went into the lab. She didn't speak to Octavius as she sat down at the microscope, drew another minuscule amount of serum out of the Zombie Juice vial, and then, with tiny, precise movements of the actuators that took more physical effort than she would have believed possible, delivered the serum into several of the neurons. The change wasn't as drastic as it had been in the dead samples from the school, simply because these neurons hadn't died yet, but there was visible improvement. She sat back from the microscope, leaning unconsciously on one of the actuators. "It's working," she said in his direction.

"Nnnhh..." He forced his eyes open again to look at her. "Is it?" he muttered. He looked at the monitor screen, watching the neurons as they repaired themselves, their dendrites becoming more healthy looking, their colour changing slightly. He left the chair and crossed the room to look at them more closely, leaning over her shoulder, his hair brushing her neck.

She sat very still, distracted by his proximity and his hair on her neck. Which made no sense whatsoever. She found herself remembering suddenly that all she wore above the waist was the harness for his actuators. She shook herself mentally. "It's doing very well," she said, her voice sounding strangely high to her ears. "I want to let the entire sample get . . . infected, is I guess the best word, before I reintroduce it. My theory that a higher initial concentration will mean a greater chance of complete success." She grinned. "I can't believe it's finally working. I've been working on this project for years, straight from theory."

"How long?" he asked, though whether he asked how long she wanted to let the sample sit or how long she'd been slaving away at this project was unclear. He didn't move from his somewhat uncomfortably close position, and kept his attention on the screen. He seemed almost riveted by the image it presented.

"Five years," she murmured. "The basis for it, using a virus-like form to spread the working mechanism of it, was the subject of my Bach. thesis. I got the idea from a science fiction book," she admitted. "Oh. If you meant... I want the sample to wait at least thirty minutes."

"Mmfh," he said. "Five years." He seated himself on the stool and watched the display, almost as though he were ignoring her presence. He was still shirtless and his hair draped over his shoulders, its black colour almost disappearing into the shadows around him as evening darkened the room.

She stretched out one actuator and grabbed her sweater from where it lay under the table, draping it over her shoulders for what little concealment and warmth it provided. "It's not very long, I know, but it's most of my adult life. I was just a kid then, trying to apply fantasy to real life." On screen, the serum continued to spread. She dialed down the magnification so they could see more of the sample. Unprovoked, the thought popped up that, if he hadn't kidnapped her tonight, she'd probably be staring at failure number whatever right about now.

"And it looks as though you've succeeded with a minimum of adverse effect. Feel lucky," He growled softly, his eyes still on the screen. After a beat, however, he shifted his gaze and looked at her, finally taking a moment to take in her appearance.

She grew nervous under his regard, fiddling with the pipette to distract herself. It didn't help that she was so much smaller than him, barely five feet tall in her lab shoes, and bonily slender, due to a tendency to forget to eat during long hours (days) spent at a time in the lab. One accident in her sophomore year had taught her not to snack during experiments, and so she skipped meals more often that not. Her stomach ached now, as a matter of fact. She adjusted her glasses, bent in some incident that she had forgotten, and tried to get her long hair to behave and stay up in its bun. If she kept her hands busy and ignored him, maybe he would go back to ignoring her.

There were probably things he should be doing. Devices to build or research to do for his latest plot, perhaps. But, truth be told, other than this, he had no "latest plot." He'd been lost for as much as an idea as to what to do with himself after he escaped from prison the last time, after that fiasco with the Palestinian Foreign Minister. Days had become aimless and nights sleepless, even when he'd tried it the other way around. He foggily remembered some grand drive to take over the world ... or at least kill Spider-man. The thought that the aforementioned arachnid was still unconscious in his kitchen flickered through his mind. The thought that there was possibly something to drink in the kitchen as well also flickered through his mind. Both thoughts went ignored and he found himself, instead, gazing contemplatively at nothing and wondering why he hadn't that drive to conquer that he used to have.

Her stomach began to claim more and more of her attention as she watched Octavius and the neurons, and she found herself counting on her fingers how many hours it had been since the last time she'd eaten. She'd been too nervous before her lab evaluation yesterday morning, and she couldn't really remember if she'd done anything other than fall face first into bed once she got home last night. This morning she'd been in a hurry . . . Her stomach growled, making the whole endeavor academic. She was hungry. She blushed again, embarrassed, and busied herself tidying the medical cabinet that she'd gotten the supplies out of.

"Did you say something?" Octavius muttered disinterestedly, watching the display again. His eyes flicked to where she stood by the cabinet. Those actuators looked far too large for her and he considered reclaiming them if for no other reason than to spare himself such a ridiculous sight.

"No," she said, but her stomach repeated itself. "I'm just, ah, hungry." She slipped around him and out into the kitchen, where Spider-Man still hadn't moved. What were left of the cabinets yielded nothing, and she leaned back into the lab. "Do you have any food?"

Octavius spluttered for a moment, his attention torn from the microscope display. "Do I have any what?!"

"Food," she said, staying by the door. "I haven't eaten in two days. Do you have any? You do eat, right?"

"No, I'm some kind of a demon that lives off sheer malevolence and gum agar," he replied, standing and only briefly steadying himself against the table. "Of course I eat, you ridiculous girl." With that, he approached the doorway between laboratory and kitchen.

She backed up to let him past. "Stupid question, right. I just couldn't find anything. It's distracting, being this hungry, and I thought that you'd appreciate me not being distracted while I finish the procedure."

He walked into the kitchen, ignoring the unconscious superhero on the floor, and started opening cabinets and cupboards. He finally opened the refrigerator. He stopped, looking between all the open and decidedly option-less receptacles. The refrigerator held a jar of mayonnaise and a jar of pickles of the kind that every refrigerator grows independently of its owner's habits, and several bottles of water. The freezer yielded a few different kinds of meat of uncertain age and several bottles of alcohol.

"Do any of those look safe to eat to you?" she asked judiciously. "I'd rather drink the Zombie Juice." She picked up the jar of pickles carefully, checked the date on the lid, and took one out, sniffing it inconspicuously. She hated pickles.

One brow rose over the rim of his goggles. "You're the one who asked me if I had food. I should think you wouldn't be so picky." He went back to plundering the shelves and the cupboards.

She took a bite of the pickle and grimaced. "Which is why I'm eating this." She actually ate three, despite the fact that they were dill, which was worse than just being pickles. Her stomach appeased slightly, she looked back into the lab, at the monitor. "I think it's ready."

Octavius stopped and looked up, a can of soup in his hand. "You are a fickle one."

"I was starving," she defended herself, putting the jar back in the fridge.

He made an odd sort of harrumphing sound and tossed the can of soup in her direction. "It's all I can find apart from those pickles," he said, walking past her and stopping to stand over Spider-man's still unconscious form.

Clair picked up the can with an actuator and hunted around for a can opener, keeping an eye on Octavius. She was still worried about Spider-Man; he shouldn't have been unconscious for this long, unless the damage was serious, but she couldn't do anything for him that didn't involve simply picking him up and running from the building. She considered that, but the actuators that she was wearing were still a mostly unknown variable. For all she knew, he had a way to recall them or make them self-destruct or something.

He contemplated dumping Spider-man out the door, but he knew he'd just come right back in again. He'd tie him up, but there wasn't anything strong enough about the place to keep him bound. His gaze made its way back to Clair, and he watched her as she stood over his stove, preparing soup. It suddenly struck him that he vaguely remembered things like these, and that such a sight had always stirred up something positive, but it was so long ago. Too long ago.

Clair's mind wandered as she stirred the soup, and she looked over her shoulder at Octavius to find him watching her. She nodded slightly and touched her temple. "It doesn't hurt, does it? The drill point, I mean. It shouldn't, but I've never done it before, so..."

"Yes. But it's easily ignored," he replied. Saying that almost seemed to ... enervate him somewhat. As though simply stating his superiority served to remind him of it. He looked back down at Spider-man's still unconscious form again, then appeared to come to a decision, as he left the room, only to come back a moment later with another length of that same pliable cord and set to binding the other's hands and feet.

"Hey," she protested, then backed down. She remembered that Octavius had tried to kill Spider-Man only half an hour ago, but he didn't seem to be making another attempt now. "Be careful, at least. I don't think he has anything broken, but he really should have woken up by now."

"Hmph," was his reply as he tightened the binding. "He's bounced back from worse." He finished tying up his enemy and stood, smoothing his trousers and only then did he remember he was shirtless. He left the room again and returned, having already pulled his shirt over one arm, now tugging it onto the other. He stopped and leaned against the kitchen island, buttoning it.

She poured the soup into two only-slightly-chipped bowls and found two spoons, pushing one across the island to Octavius. "It's hot," she warned, waving her spoonful in the air to cool it. "It's a little burned, sorry. I haven't cooked anything more complicated than a pop tart in a long time."

Octavius eyed the bowl of soup for a moment before picking it up and swirling the spoon in it. He watched her blow on her spoonful and pop it in her mouth. Returning his attention to the broth and vegetables and little bits of meat, he slowly lifted a spoonful into his own mouth and wondered briefly when the last time he'd eaten had been. Silence descended over the room again.

She finished her soup quickly, scraping the bowl clean and handing it to an actuator to put it in the sink. She wasn't used to them, not by a long shot, but as long as she thought of them as _very_ attentive and intuitive lab assistants, she could disassociate them from the needles in her back and make good use of them. He wasn't done with his soup yet, so she went back into the lab, checking the monitor. Every neuron that she could see was whole and healthy, and some were even sparking randomly, as healthy neurons do. She smiled broadly in the light of the screen.

He followed after her, still slurping contemplatively at the soup. Even now, food still held something of a comfort, however distant and unremarkable that comfort may be. He raised the bowl to his lips and drank, blinking over the rim at the microscope display.

Clair looked up at him, still smiling. "It's almost ahundred percentrevitalization rate. I never even imagined that it would work this well. This is, oh, this is incredible. I can't wait until Dr. Mitchells sees this."

Octavius put down the bowl of soup and looked at her. "What on earth makes you think he's _going_ to see it?"

She froze, her smile fading. "When I go back..." She trailed off. She hadn't thought about this end of the situation at all. What would happen to her when he no longer needed her?

"Neither you nor this ... discovery will leave here. Did you honestly think I was going to simply let you go when this was finished?" he demanded, towering over her. His gaze flickered to the actuators, but he knew she wouldn't' be able to use them well enough to attack him.

She shrank back, fighting back a wave of hysteria that threatened everything. "I, I," she stuttered, but she couldn't think of anything to say. The world narrowed to one fact; she was going to die. "No," she whispered.

Octavius leaned forward and into her space. "Yes," he replied. "You've been quite useful, but once the procedure is finished, your usefulness will come to an end. You cannot leave here knowing what you know."

"No," she repeated, her head spinning. She couldn't think, or breathe. "No!" Shoving him aside with an actuator, she bolted for the door, flight her only option now. She wasn't going to die here, when she'd just succeeded. She couldn't.

With a growl, he lunged, his hands grasping for her, aiming to stop her. The actuators may have been strong, but she was still small and light enough for him to catch.

She screamed as his hands caught her leg. She couldn't concentrate well enough to use the actuators against him, but she kicked her free leg at him and tried to yank free. She fought desperately, trying to get away, get out.

He grabbed one of the actuators and pulled mightily, his other arm swinging round to wrap around her torso again, but her kicking overbalanced the both of them and he fell, bringing her down with him and landing atop her.

She struggled futilely, but he was too much larger then her. She stilled, breathing fast in panic.

His hands caught her wrists and pressed them against the floor, his snarling face only inches from hers. "Are you as slow as you appear?" he demanded. "Your first escape attempt was just as futile--one would think you'd have learnt from it!" As he lay atop her, immobilizing her, she could feel the intense heat he radiated.

She stared at him, panting. "I, I don't want to die," she breathed, only a step from crying. Her back hurt where the actuators pressed into it, and his weight was making it hard for her to breathe.

"No-one wants to die," he growled quietly, his gaze boring into her, even from behind the goggles. "The only difference is one's reason."

She was shaking, and she knew he'd be able to feel it. "I just reached it, the goal, succeeded," she babbled, hysteria breaking down the barriers. "I just did, just _won_, and you helped me, and now you're going to kill me? And no one will know I did it." The last was said quietly as she fought to bring her breathing back under control, fought not to just break down and cry.

He grew still at that, his hands still holding her wrists against the floor, but he no longer pushed her against it, no longer snarled. His face had grown expressionless again, and she could feel the actuators moving slowly under her, waving, snakelike, conveying the movement that he himself had somehow stilled. He looked at her, a long hard look as though seeing her in a new light.

She closed her eyes, turning her face away from his. "Dr. Mitchell will figure it out eventually, if he ever looks at the myelin," she said, mostly to herself. "But no one will know that it was mine, and I did it. My discoveries, and they worked. I did it." She clenched her fists, then released them, going completely limp.

He'd done it once: he'd afforded someone else the chance he'd never had. The chance to continue, unchanged. The chance to earn recognition for hard-won discoveries. He'd done it before and had been imprisoned for his trouble. Vilified. Yet... every attempt was a new one. Probability reset itself, never factored in the past when it came to success or failure. Mightn't this time... be different? Mightn't this time show Otto Octavius to the world instead of Doctor Octopus? Mightn't the simple fact that Spider-man hadn't meddled maybe alter the probable outcome? As absurd as it may sound, things had already followed a different course than usual now that they progressed without his influence. Perhaps they'd end differently, too.

He sat up, releasing her wrists, and stood slowly, his gaze never leaving her. "What would you do if I freed you?" he asked.

She sat up awkwardly, watching him to see if he was mocking her. But she couldn't read the goggles. "I'd run very far away, as fast as I could," she said honestly, rubbing her wrists.

"That much is obvious," he growled, walking away and approaching the microscope array again. "I mean after that. What would you do with what you knew? With what has happened here today?"

She got stiffly to her feet, but stayed where she was. Keeping her voice neutral despite the hope she felt, she said, "I'd recreate the experiment again, in a proper lab. Test it again, document all of it, and then I'd publish it."

"Mmm," he said, nodding. He leaned one hand against the table and turned slightly to look at her, though he said nothing. After a beat, he pushed a hand through his hair, as though in an attempt to bring its wild flowing strands under some kind of control.

"You're a scientist," she said, straightening. "You must know what I mean. It's all that matters. Discovery and recognition."

He turned to look at her fully now. "I can't decide whether you're mocking me or trying to curry favour," he said. "Neither is a very wise course of action."

"I'm doing neither," she said. Her glasses had fallen off at some point in the course of the failed escape, and her grey eyes were earnest. "You asked me what I would do. That's what, and why."

He remained still, staring into the distance. The initial adrenaline rush had worn off and he found himself struggling to push words to the fore of his mind again. Concepts flowed about, yet nothing crystallized. Nothing made itself coherent. He scowled heavily and turned to look at the display again. "Let's finish this. Then..." his voice dropped and he almost seemed to have to force the words out. "And then... you may go."

She smiled slightly in relief, and nodded a thank you. "I'll set up," she said, and headed out into the kitchen, finding the anesthesia pump and righting it, checking that nothing was broken. She set it up next to the kitchen counter, since the table was in pieces, then went back in and took the sample from under the microscope. "This is the easy part," she said, not looking at him. "I just have to reintroduce these."

He seemed not to look at her, either. "Very well," he said. "Just tell me where you plan on doing this now that the table's been destroyed."

She looked around, spotting the overstuffed chair that he'd been in earlier. 'The chair, there, would work. All I need is for your head to hold absolutely still. This one will be very fast, I promise."  
He looked at her, then walked over to the chair and sat, watching her, waiting.

She got the anesthetic pump and set it up next to him, handing him the mask to put on for himself rather than touch him. "Lean back," she cautioned, drawing the tiny sample into the syringe, fresh from the autoclave. "And count back from ten." She looked up from her hands at him, smiling slightly.

He nodded and settled in, the mask over his face, and closed his eyes again. This time she could see that even more clearly as the angle of the light near her hit the goggles at a lateral angle, lighting underneath the lens somewhat. An ever-so-slightly curved line of black. "Ten..." he mumbled. "Nine... eight ... seven... six ... five ... ... four...." he trailed off after that, falling silent and still.

Pulling the lamp closer with an actuator, she pulled the band-aid off the original site. She handed the syringe off to the upper-right actuator while the upper left steadied his head carefully. Checked his pulse, and kept her fingers on his wrist while the actuator eased the needle into his skull, deposited its microscopic cargo, and withdrew. Less than a minute after he had gone under, she dialed down the anesthetic and sat back to wait for him to wake up.


	3. Effects

**Unreasonable**

**Chapter 3: Effects**

By Yumegari and LRH

Again, the road to consciousness seemed a long slog as he sighed after a few moments. His eyelids fluttered and eventually eased open. "Nnnh..." He looked at her a little blearily, blinking.

"Hey," she said softly. "Welcome back."

He blinked slowly. The air felt strangely charged, and he could feel it in his nostrils as he breathed, the strange, sharp, pinkish-orange scent of the anesthetic still lingering. And yet... there was more. A mingling of odours, slipping into the fore of his attention. A brown, thick scent he recognized as the soup they'd just eaten combined with an almost overpowering gold, almost powdery odour that he couldn't readily identify. It swirled in his nostrils with a barely noticeable light-blue, dry scent he vaguely recognized as laundry soap and the bizarre, yellow-green tang of artificial green-apple scent. These scents painted lines over a backdrop of a dull, smooth, warm beige easily recognizable as the scent of another human being. Lancing through it, however, was a sharp, pungent, dark yellow smell of adrenaline-saturated sweat. Fear. He could smell the fear that had made her shake only a short time ago. Behind that was the greyish-brown odour of his own home. He sat up and blinked at her. "You smell terrible," he said, with the tone of someone telling a friend who looked a wreck that they looked awful.

She made a face, somewhat insulted, then it smoothed away as she realized what was happening. "It's the serum," she said. "I injected it straight into your frontal lobe, right about the area that processes scent signals. It should go back to normal shortly. How do you feel?"

There was a pause, then he blinked and one hand crept to his throat. He gulped audibly. "Nauseous..." he managed. He rolled from the chair and staggered at an alarming pace past her and to another door to her right that she'd not noticed before, pushing it open and disappearing behind it. The sound of retching could be heard two seconds later.

Aghast, she went to the door, but not through it, letting him keep what dignity he could.  
He hated vomiting. He absolutely hated it. Hunching over a toilet bowl was a ridiculous position, and the stuff always got into his nose. His throat always burned and his eyes always streamed, his middle and chest always ached by the time he'd finished, and the very concept of it was disturbing to say the least. And yet, after his stomach had emptied itself, the smell, acidic and sickly-sweet, thick and grey-green and powerful, invaded his nostrils the moment he was able to draw breath and turned his stomach once more, doubling him over and robbing him of breath again as his insides heaved and his throat closed up and his hands curled round the toilet seat, gripping it. He gasped horribly and yet the heaving continued, cold sweat dripping on his forehead. It had gotten into his hair, which hung in lank, damp strands around his face. He seemed to hyper-focus on the beaded, wet lines that connected his face to the now filthy water and still gasped for breath.

When he didn't come out, she went in. She wet the sleeve of her sweater in the sink and knelt next to him, pulling his hair back and wiping it as clean as she could. "I'm really sorry," she said contritely.

"I forgot, I forgot that you can't eat before anesthetic. I'm so sorry."

He leaned forward, his cheek pressed against the cool plastic of the toilet seat, and struggled to catch his breath. The smell seemed to subside in intensity after a moment--was he getting used to it or was the enhancement wearing off like she said it would. He drew a long, shuddering breath and pushed himself upward, only to fall to the side and lean against the wall. But at least the smell wasn't nauseating him further any more. Maybe now the room would stop spinning.

She took care of the mess and sat next to him, crossing her legs and watching him closely. "Better yet?" she asked carefully. "The serum is going to spread through your brain like a wave, spreading out from the injection site. I don't know how fast it will go, but the next big thing it ought to hit is your speech center."

He sat against the wall for a moment, still breathing heavily, his eyes closed, and a rueful half-smile flickered across his features. "You mean I'll start babbling next? Heh heh.... People have always said I talked too much... they haven't heard anything yet, now, have they....?"

"It won't last very long," she offered helpfully. "It's just the rejuvenation itself that produces a mild euphoria in the brain." She itched to take notes of this, her first human subject, but felt it would be inappropriate.

"Hehhh.." He seemed to finally catch his breath, somewhat. "Euphoria.... Now there's something I ... hadn't expected...." He pushed himself to his knees and then stood, swaying. "Not staying in here any longer..." he muttered and turned, weaving out of the bathroom and back toward the easy chair, flopping into it.

She followed him again, hunting for her glasses briefly, then pulling up the wheeled stool and perching on it, still watching him. The arms uncurled lazily behind her, and one reached out, picked up the discarded syringe, and put it neatly on the table next to it. "Does it feel like anything?" she asked avidly.

He opened his eyes again and rolled his head to the side to look at her. An amused look crossed his features for a moment. "I remember ... such ... avid ... fascination. Such a drive ... to ... know all possible ... results...." He shook his head. "Heh.... You're itching to write all this down... aren't you?"

She nodded, already looking around for paper and something to write with. "Please, tell me everything you can."

"Hnnn..." he rumbled. "I don't recall ever having been a subject of study before...." One hand rubbed at his face. "By all means, I should ignore your questioning and send you on your way before I change my mind, but I feel compelled to tell you what you want to know. Call it the last vestige of some kind of respect for scientific progress, if you will. I can't say I feel much differently to how I normally feel except that everything seems brighter, louder, smellier, and my fingers are tingling. Heightened sensory perception, I suppose. I feel as though I ought to be twitching, but I'm obviously not. My thoughts are full of words... " he trailed off, looking past her. "And I still feel a little queasy." One hand twitched and he looked down at it.

She found a pen and started taking notes on a piece of paper from the pocket of her lab coat. "It's in your motor cortex," she said. "And it should reach your limbic system very soon. That controls emotional responses and behavioral drives, like hunger and anger."

He stood, pacing about. "I've at least a nodding acquaintance with the brain's functioning, thank you..." He put his twitching hands behind his back and kept moving, pacing back and forth, back and forth, occasionally taking a deep breath to still whatever internal twitching he might have been experiencing. "And as to behaviourial drives, I also like to think I might have some kind of control over them. Although I do feel rather hungry now that you mention it. Still I wouldn't want to eat after all that..." Another short heh sound. "I used to be found chewing on something almost all the time, and now I can barely dredge up the interest..." he laughed at that, an almost nervous sound, and continued pacing up and down.

She took another note -hungry, nervous- and continued in her post of observer, watching him pace the room. She pulled the actuators back to keep them out of his way, the lower two braced against the floor and the upper two arched up over her shoulders.

He paced back and forth a few more times and then stopped, noticing that movement, then looking at her as though seeing something about her for the first time. "You've already gotten used to them, haven't you?"

She stared at him for a breath, until she figured out what he meant. "Oh. Um, a little, yeah. They're not as intrusive as they were at first. I don't have to think about them so much."

"Your movements with them... they're almost instinctive," he said, stepping closer to look at her. "Look at the way you've curled them round you like that." One hand came to rest on her shoulder, almost unbearably hot against her skin as the other ran a finger along the length of the top left arm. "I've never seen them on someone else before."

She stiffened, looking at his hand on the actuator, hyper-aware of the pulse in the ball of his thumb against her shoulder.

"Quite a striking image, wouldn't you say?" he continued, now looking down at her once again, so close to her that she could again feel the heat actually radiating from him. "Such a bizarre fusion of human and machine... Strangely stimulating, when you think about it..." Very close, now, his hand moving to the side of her head.

"Striking," she repeated quietly, looking up at him. "Yes..." She pulled back, pushing the stool backwards until her back was against a table. She felt suddenly colder.

"I've seen the way you've been looking at me, you know," he said, apropos of seemingly nothing. "Were I anything like the crowd of hormone-soaked, brainless, subhuman individuals you've probably accustomed to, I would have seen that as perhaps some sort of cue, and taken advantage of it." He took a few steps closer. "Perhaps I should."

Her eyes widened as she caught his point. "What? No, I haven't been..." He was far too close for comfort. "What are you talking about?"

He grabbed her upper arms. "So now you decide to play coy with me?"

"I'm not playing anything!" she said hastily, trying to pull away. "What are you doing?"

"Don't deny what you've been doing, what I've seen!" he shouted. "Those glances, that tone of your voice! You've become attracted, haven't you?" His hands once again came up to either side of her head, fingers in her hair, palms pressed above her ears. "Well? What is it you want?"

"I don't want anything!" she protested, trying to pull her head free. "Please, don't touch me!"

If at all possible, he grew even angrier, his scowl growing heavier. "You're afraid, now. You're _repulsed_, now, aren't you?" he snarled, grabbing her shoulders again. "Now that something comes of those stares, you've suddenly lost the fascination! Oh, no, you couldn't, possibly, not with a monster like myself!" He wrestled her against the table, holding her down, pressing her against it.

The last time she'd been this frightened of him, he had had his hand around her neck. She struggled, desperation giving her more strength than she had. She lashed out with the actuators, hitting him ineffectually across the shoulders. One blow got lucky, catching him across the back of the head.  
He lurched forward and almost on top of her, his head alongside hers, hair falling over her face. But his grip on her shoulders loosened and he grew still, his breathing loud in her ear for a few breathes. Four... five... he pulled away slowly, straightening and taking a step backward. He looked away. "Animalistic of me..." he muttered, pushing his hand through his hair again. He walked back to the armchair and sat in it.

She didn't move for a long moment, then she stood up, unsteadily, and ran her hand through her own hair, which had come completely loose from its bun. She let it hang down, hiding her face as she walked out into the kitchen without saying anything, shutting the door between them. Her knees gave out and she slid down the wall next to the door to sit there, her arms wrapped around her knees, trying to stop shaking before she bit her tongue. Her heart beat didn't seem to want to slow at all from its current pace of frightened-rabbit.

In the silence of the room, she became aware that she was being watched. Spider-man stirred and, after noticing his bound state, struggled up onto his knees. There was a pause as he apparently solidified his thoughts before he looked at her again, noticing her state. "What's the matter?" he asked, peering at her.

She shook her head, denying anything. "He, uh, he." She couldn't finish the sentence. She swallowed, and got her voice under control. "Are you okay?"

"Nothin a few aspirin and a hot bath won't cure," the other replied glibly. He shifted his shoulders, apparently attempting to work his hands free. "You seem a little leery to tell me anything, doncha? Lemme guess,," he continued. "He threatened to kill you if you told anybody, right?"

"No," she said, sitting up a little. "It's not that. It's not . . . Nothing happened." She wrapped her arms tighter around herself, and the actuators as well, listening for any sound from the room behind her. "He didn't do anything."

"You sure don't look as though he didn't do anything. You look more like you're expecting him to come crashing through that door any second," was Spider-man's reply. He pulled one hand free, then, after a little more shifting, pulled the other free, as well.

She looked up at the door, which remained satisfactorily un-crashed-through. "Just, just a side-effect. I think it was a side-effect. Stimulate the limbic system, get a response." She tried to think about it clinically, and failed.

"Uh huh," Spider-man replied, now working on untying his feet. "And what'd he do? Limbic system's pretty well tied to emotions and drives, isn't it? Doc Ock's a pretty dangerous lab rat, doncha think?"

"His idea, not mine," she said into her knees. "I want to go home."

Spider-man finished untying his feet and stood, taking a moment to work the kinks out of his spine. "I can get you out of here and to the police. And hey, if you bring 'em those arms, maybe they'll knock half-price off their Witness Protection Programe, whatddya say?" he finished, holding out a hand to her.

She looked up at him, and took his hand to stand up, but looked back at the door. "Okay."

"Great," he replied. "Let's get out of here before--" he stopped short and appeared to twitch, his gaze whipping toward the door. "Hooboy," he said. "Get behind me." He lifted a hand to web the door shut, but nothing happened. He tried the other one. "Not cool," he muttered backing up a pace. The door opened.

She did as she was told, putting not only Spider-Man, but half the destroyed table between her and the lab door. "What's wrong?" she started to ask in response to his mutter, but then the door opened and she froze, except for the arms, which lay low to the ground, weaving warily back and forth.

"There you are, I was wondering if you were going to come back out. Listen, I--" Octavius stopped, the door open fully now, affording him a perfect view of Spider-man, who stood between him and Clair. "You've gone and freed him." He almost looked a little hurt.

"No," she said softly, chewing the corner of her lip and backing up almost involuntarily. "I just didn't stop him."

"And wasn't that lucky for both of us, eh, Chubs, because now I get the two-for-one special. Bring in a villain and a witness and get a year's subscription to Columbia Record Club for free!" With that, he backed up, a glance at the window telling him it would be easy to break and yank Clair through in a minimum of time.

Octavius clenched a fist, scowling spectacularly at his long-time foe. "Do you have any idea how tired I am of hearing that?! It's all well and good for you, isn't it, you over metabolized little pipsqueak? You haven't shut up, just grinding the same lines in year after year after year, ever since this mess first started!"

Clair pressed herself against the wall, staying as far away from Octavius as she could. If she got too close, he could take control over the arms again. Of course, she wasn't sure he couldn't at this distance, only about 15 feet, but there wasn't much else she could do.

"Why Otto, I'm shocked," Spidey replied flippantly, backing up to the window. "You'd think from how you're talking that I spend all my time coming up with new ways to insult you!"

"And even now you try to goad me! Even now! When I come so close to being able to ... able to ... agh!" He reeled, clutching his head, his shoulder hitting the doorframe as he sank to the floor. "Nngh...."

Clair took a startled breath. This wasn't supposed to happen. Fear of Octavius warred with concern for the patient. She moved forward, haltingly.

He remained kneeling on the floor, bent forward, his hands at either side of his head and buried in his hair. "Ngeh..." he spluttered. "So much sound... in my mind..." he gasped.

Spider-man paused, watching the latest little drama unfold, stepping out of the way of both of them, an action that brought him closer to the window.

Decision made, she came to his side, but there was nothing she could do for him. It was in his head, very literally. "It'll pass," she said quietly.

He knelt on the floor, panting. "Changes ... made to control... arms...." His head came up and the most malevolently exhilarated grin split his features. "I can hear them, now! Feel them! Even from here, even though they're connected to someone else, I can control them!" With that, the actuators, quite of their own accord, whipped toward Spider-man.

Clair yelped as she was jerked backwards. She tried, frantically, but she couldn't control them at all now, or even influence them. The sleeping-limb feeling roared up her spine, stealing her breath away.

The actuators pounded against the walls and floor, shattering the window Spider-man had been edging toward and destroying more of the room's interior. Spider-man dodged and flipped out of the way, then disappeared out the window, only to return a moment later to leap toward the wall, bounce off of it, flip past the actuators, and barrel into Octavius, knocking him to the floor.

Clair curled in on herself as best she could, protecting her head while the arms did their damage.  
"Stop," she yelled. "Stop it!" She wasn't talking to either of them. Instead, she was pulling at the cord that held the harness tightly on her, trying to get it off, get away from the things before they dashed her against a wall.

Spider-man had rolled free of Octavius and had come in for another shot, but Octavius rolled aside and snapped to his feet, wobbled, then suddenly caught Spider-man's next punch and threw him against the wall. The fight continued as Spider-man threw kicks and punches and Octavius dodged them with uncanny speed, finally catching the other's foot and upending him, spilling him onto the floor, following it up with a blindingly fast downward punch, which Spider-man rolled out of the way of, sweeping Octavius' feet from under him. Octavius hit the floor and immediately launched himself at his foe, catching him across the chin and in the stomach before Spider-man managed to grab Octavius's head and butt it with his own with a sickening crack.

Clair was still struggling with Octavius's knots, which were complicated and many, when she heard the sound. She looked up to see if either of them were still standing.

Octavius fell forward, ending up on his hands and knees again, before Spider-man hauled him upright and slammed him against the wall. "Gimme that cord," he said, waving one red-and-black-clad hand toward it. Octavius struggled, but dazedly and ineffectually.

Finally getting her feet under her, she worked the cord free and passed it to Spider-Man, slightly dazed herself. The harness gaped loose, still attached to her by the needles in the back.

Octavius struggled harder, but Spider-man managed to bind his wrists in front of him. He sank to the floor, panting, and looked up at Clair, his eyes still unreadable behind the goggles.

She avoided his gaze, pulling tentatively at the harness, and hissed when it pulled at her back. "How do you get this off?" she asked aloud, twisting an arm behind her back to feel it. "I want them off."  
Octavius dropped his head. "Just unfasten it," he said, his voice sounding strangely defeated. "Once you do that, a disconnecting mechanism will retract the needles."

She ducked her head and unfastened the harness, gritting her teeth and clenching her eyes shut as the needles retracted. Suddenly, she felt so light as they fell away, and she swayed, then caught herself against the wall.

There was a pause, then suddenly the actuators whipped themselves away from her, arrowing toward Spider-man. He leaped out of the way at the last minute, and they pursued him, whipping and striking until one managed to slap against his head, and two more struck him across the face and chest, sending him flopping to the floor. They stood over him like some bizarre kind of insect before they made their way toward Octavius.

Clair backed away yet again, finding a corner behind her. She didn't take her eyes off Otto and the arms as she edged sideways, spidering along the wall until she was behind the island.

He looked up at her again as the actuators lowered themselves next to him, tentacles curling inward until the whole array sat like a bizarre, long-legged dog.

She pressed backwards as though she wished she could melt through the wall. Through the goggles, she had no way of telling what he was thinking, what his new intentions were.

One of the actuator heads nuzzled under his hand the way a dog does with its head. Absently, he curled his fingers over it. "I told you I wasn't going to kill you," he said, sounding confused.

"That's not what I was afraid of," she answered, taking a deep breath.

He looked puzzled for a moment, brows meeting in confusion. He took a breath as though to say something, then stopped. Gazed off into the distance again for a moment, then blinked. He snerked, then began to laugh, a wheezing sound.

"Why are you laughing? It's not funny!" she protested.

"Heh. From here, it is. Of all the things I could possibly do, all the pain, the constant threat of death, and the thing that frightens you the most is the prospect that I could take advantage of you." He shook his head, still snickering quietly.

"It's not funny," she repeated, taking a step forward, beginning to get angry. "I'd begun to think that you were _maybe_ human. I helped you, and you tried _that_, and..."

"Doesn't it simply reinforce an appearance of humanity? It's what humans do, isn't it?"

The frustrations of the past few hours collected and overflowed. "Humans, _normal_ people don't kidnap people and make them do surgery on them. If I were anything like you, I'd have _killed_ you while you were under the anesthetic, or at least left you under for _him_ to collect." she shouted, gesturing at Spider-Man. "Normal people feel gratitude!"

"Gratitude?" he echoed, standing, though with a little difficulty. "I should think the fact that I've decided to let you live after all this has finished can be considered gratitude enough! You are not in a position to expect anything more, girl! And as to the extent of my humanity," His voice dropped to a low, intense growl as he stepped forward. "I'm sure you've noticed by now that I'm far enough removed from humanity that such measures have become a necessity!"

"You're not removed from it at all!" She clenched her fists and glared at him. "You're just a messed-up _freak_ who thinks that his problems are more important than everyone else's."

There was a pause. A dangerously silent pause as he turned white. A split second later, his tied hands shot out and grasped her throat in a tight grip. His face, twisted with fury, snarled inches away from her. "How dare you..." he hissed. His grip tightened.

She gasped uselessly for air, clawing at his hands and trying to pull away. "I'm sorry," she mouthed frantically, unable to speak. "I'm sorry!" Her lungs burned with the effort, and her knees went weak, which just made matters worse.

"You're ... sorry." he repeated. His grip loosened a fraction, just enough to allow her to breathe. "You're ... sorry." He looked about to say something else but the words refused to form.

She continued trying to pry his hand loose, her eyes locked on his. "I'm sorry," she repeated, her voice a rough whisper. "I didn't mean to. I was angry."

"You expect me to accept such an excuse? The world is filled with such flimsy motivations," he growled quietly.

"No," she said, starting to cry. Her shoulders shook, and she wouldn't have been able to get enough air even if he hadn't still been holding her by the throat.

He released her and stepped backward, an unidentifiable look on his face, almost as though he'd come upon something he had no clue what to do with.

She collapsed to the floor, sobbing with her hair covering her face. This was just one straw too many, and her mind couldn't handle it. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she repeated insensibly, her hands hovering around her bruised throat, but not touching it.

This, more than anything else, caused him a bizarre confusion. He couldn't even pinpoint why his thoughts ... scattered like that, why he found himself wishing he knew what to do. He always knew what to do. He always assessed the situation and came to a definite conclusion. But now, with this girl kneeling on his floor and sobbing, he found himself ... lost. His eyes darted about the room, came to rest on her again, then searched the room a second time. He'd noticed, almost detatchedly, now, that she was topless. He stood, located her sweater, and returned to where she still knelt. Unsure of what exactly to do with it, he reached forward, poking it into her field of vision.

She jerked and looked up at him in surprise. His expression was something she'd never seen before. Slowly, she took it and pulled it over her head, ridiculously grateful for the feel of it covering her, hardly even noticing the soaked cuff. "Thank you," she said haltingly, wiping her eyes. Her shoulders still shook, but she sat up and repeated herself one last time. "I'm sorry. I know I shouldn't have said that to you. It's an awful thing to be called."

Sitting next to her, he blinked at her for a moment, then looked away, a rueful look on his face. "That's the first time I've ever heard an apology from anyone for something they said," he mused.

She pulled at her dry sleeve, hiccoughing. "It was awful," she repeated. "I hated being called a freak in school, and I swore I never would. It's the worst word in the world."

"Hnnn," he growled thoughtfully. "It quite probably is," he said, his voice a low rumble. Of all things, he found himself wishing he could think of anything else to say, but words were lost to him. He sat silently, staring contemplatively at the floor.

"It shouldn't be, should it?" she rambled, pulling at a loose thread. "Five letters, one meaning. 'a person, animal, or plant which is abnormal, aberrant or deformed.' It shouldn't hurt so much." She looked up again, but her eyes were far away. "Especially from someone who should have known better, who you thought that you knew better. And it shouldn't stick for so long."

He blinked. "How do you mean?" he asked, sounding strangely curious.

She turned her head, looking at him but not seeing him. "I was sixteen. Not that long ago. I'd just graduated, and Chad," She broke off briefly, her face twisted. "He didn't deal with it well. Couldn't comprehend that I wasn't leaving high school just to spite him. And the scholarship didn't help. And it shouldn't still hurt!" She ground her teeth. "I'm a grown woman, for crying out loud."

"Things have a way of staying with a person long after they should have faded," he stated rather gruffly. There was a pause. "He thought you'd graduated early just to spite him?" he asked, one eyebrow raised.

She shook her head, scowling at the past. "He wanted me to stay with him. Told me I had to choose between him, and college. And I did, and we had the worst fight." She touched her eye, soothing a bruise long-healed. "He called me a freak when I hit him back. A stupid, stuck-up freak." She laughed slightly, humourlessly. "For him, that was as close to clever as you got."

Now Octavius was amused. "And you dated him?"

She shrugged. "I was sixteen, and I fell for the cheesiest pick-up line in the world." She rocked back on her heels and laughed harder. "'I lost my phone number, can I have yours?' In hindsight, I should have known he'd be a moron. He died as much an idiot as he lived."

Octavius shifted slightly, finding a more comfortable position in which to sit, his hands still bound. The bandage on the side of his head bore a small red spot where the hole bled slightly. He reached up and rubbed gently at it. "Oh, do tell. I could use a laugh."

"A skateboard accident," she said acidly, smiling as she leaned against the island. "He thought he could play chicken with a delivery truck. He was in a coma for a year before he finally died last month. And do you know what could have saved him?"

He smirked. "You're itching to tell me. What could have saved him?"

She cocked her head to the side, smiling crookedly and tapped his forehead, right between his brows. "Zombie Juice."

A beat passed. Octavius snickered. "Oh, the irony," he said, an almost uncharacteristic smile on his face.

"Yeah," she said, nodding and looking back at her hands. "That's one word for it. And what a proof it would have been, for it to heal a brain so damaged. The damage from the accident, at least. There's not much it could have done for the latent stupidity."

"It'd be 'Flowers For Algernon' all over again, in some ways," he replied a little contemplatively.

"Something like that." She looked up at him through her hair. "Out of regard for the scientific process, how are you feeling now? At the rate it was going, the serum should be almost completely spread."

He thought on that for a moment. "I feel... almost as though I've woken up from a fever dream. I don't really know how else to explain it." He looked as though he would say something else, then stopped and fell silent, gazing thoughtfully at nothing. After a pause, he spoke again. "My mind feels ... clearer. Like ... a radio connexion that lost all the interference that had been making it fuzzy and garbled.... And I feel somewhat lightheaded...." he added, as though coming upon a realization he wasn't expecting.

"Good," she said, nodding, then she looked over her shoulder at Spider-Man's limp form. "I wonder if he could use some. Two concussions in one day; not good. There has to be some serious damage in there."

He turned and looked at his enemy's still form. "He's been through worse. He's been beaten bloody more times than most people can count and he seems to come out of it all right." He shifted again, his wrists pulling against the bindings. "However, if he keeps falling over the next time he and I fight, I'll be sure to send him your way," he finished dryly.

"If I'm still around," she said, rubbing her throat. "I seem to make some lousy decisions about who I yell at."

"Shows you've got a spine" came his gruff reply. "I was beginning to wonder, there." He shifted again. "I thoroughly expect you to refuse, but ... would ... you untie me?"

She looked at him, one eyebrow raised. "You're joking, right?"

"I don't joke," he replied. "You have my assurance, for what it's worth, that I won't touch you."

She conceded, and reached over to slip the knots loose. "You don't seem like the joking type."  
He sighed and rubbed his wrists as the knots came free, flexing his hands. "Hnnn..." he said after a moment, that sound that meant he was thinking, and perhaps about to say something.

"What is it?" she asked, leaning her head back against the cabinet again and playing with the cord, braiding it through her fingers.

He sighed again, a different sound this time. "I don't often say this. Not much call to, you see. But ... yes." He cleared his throat. "Thank you." He looked away.

"Oh," she said, slightly startled. "You're welcome. I'm glad it worked. I was worried, you know. Until today, it was only theory."

"Hm," he said. "Seems to have worked rather well," he said, gazing distantly again. He stood again, and approached the actuators, stopping and looking down at them for a moment before silently unbuttoning his shirt again.

"I think they might be part of your problem," she said, standing up. "Your mind just isn't designed to handle extra limbs. It doesn't have the connections."

He stopped, then tilted his head back slightly. "How much do you know of me?" he asked, not turning to face her.

"Only what's been in the Daily Bugle," she admitted. "What everyone knows."

"Hm," he said. "In other words, not much." He finished unbuttoning the shirt and shrugged it off, holding it in one hand for a beat before dropping it. "You know that I've made myself a lot of enemies, don't you?"

"Yes," she nodded, glancing over at Spider-Man. "I understand what you mean. I just meant to tell you that the serum won't protect you from future abuse. I'm sure you know what I mean when I say that the brain is a delicate computer."

"Yes, I do," he said, picking up the harness and placing it over his shoulders like one would don a vest. "I've no choice, though. Perhaps... perhaps you'd best hope that I'm killed before I am forced to find you again for another dose." He slowly fastened the stays on the harness.

"I'll make myself harder to find," she promised. "This has been a . . . an experience that I would not really care to repeat." She moved over to the lab door, going to get her notes and the vial of serum.

The last stay fastened, Octavius took a breath and waited for the stab of the needles into his spine. He gasped as sensations flooded his consciousness. He'd almost gotten used to being without them, and now that he'd reattached them, the vague notion that maybe they really were a factor in his previously deteriorating condition rose which, along with the rush of data and sensations, caused him to lean dizzily against the wall, panting. "No choice," he gasped, more to himself than to anyone else. "There is no choice...."

She came back into the kitchen, pulling her lab coat on, her notes and the vial tucked safely in the pockets. "Did you say something?" she asked, pulling her hair out of her collar. She felt more like herself than she had since he'd come through the window at the lab.

Still leaning against the wall, he drew one hand down his sweating face "Nothing," he muttered. "I said nothing...."

"Are you okay?" she asked, concerned for the patient once more. "I didn't think they'd affect you this badly again, this soon. They didn't do anymore to me than a mild headache."

He slid to the floor, still leaning against the wall, the actuators now curling slowly toward him. "It's not only them," he muttered, his breath still loud. "Enormity. Lack of choice..." He swallowed labouriously, running his hand over his face again.

She perched on her heels in front of him, examining his face critically. "Not to sound cliché, but there's always a choice. You might be safer, physically and mentally, in custody. I understand if it's not an attractive option, but it's there."

"Not ... necessarily," he said, slowly catching his breath. "Survival is survival no matter the surroundings. Custody would prove no safer than the world out here.... and an institution wouldn't have people such as yourself...." He fell silent again, still breathing heavily.

"You have a point." She fell silent, looking around. Then she stood up. "Am I free to go?"

He'd calmed somewhat, still leaning against the wall. "Yes," he said. "I keep my word, if nothing else." There was a pause, and he lifted one hand. "One question, though."

"Ask away," she said, checking to make sure she had everything important. Check.

"What ..." He almost didn't ask it. But he'd been wondering, and something in the back of his mind prompted him to ask, before she left. Something he should know no matter what he might have consciously thought about it. He forced the words out. "What is your name?"

"Clair Watson," she said before she could stop herself. "I probably shouldn't have told you that."

"Hnnnn..." he said, smiling almost at a private joke. "Who will I tell?"

"I'm more worried about you looking in a phone book and finding it, to tell the truth," she said, smiling weakly. "No offense meant."

Here he chuckled. "A pity, that, and here I was hoping we could get together for coffee sometime...."

She smiled a little more. "I'll have to pass. Thank you for the help, doctor, and I hope sincerely never to see you again." She walked over to the door that she hadn't seen open yet, the one with a peep hole. Of course, it was locked. She jiggled the knob a few times, and looked back at him. "Er, could you unlock it?"

One actuator snaked toward the door and unlocked the deadbolt and pulled back the three door latches. He said not a word as it retracted to curl round him again.

She stepped out, and looked back again. He looked so tragic there, but there was nothing keeping her there any longer. "Good bye," she said softly, shutting the door. She walked away, slowly at first, but each step grew faster until she was running from the building. She didn't stop until she reached her own apartment, near the university. She checked her pockets, and realized that she had left her keys in her backpack, which was still at the university. Laughing, she sank to sit on the edge of the stoop. The laughter grew and grew until she was half-hysterical, rocking back and forth with her head thrown back. One of her ground-floor neighbours, Jake, came out to tell her off, but stopped when he saw her face and the bruises on her neck.

"What happened to you, Clair?" he asked frankly, looking around to see if a mugger or angry boyfriend lurked nearby.

"I just realized," she laughed, snorting ridiculously. "I left my bra in Doctor Octopus's lab!"


	4. Aftermath

**Unreasonable**

**Chapter 4: Aftermath**

By Yumegari and LRH

"I just realized," she laughed, snorting ridiculously. "I left my bra in Doctor Octopus's lab!"

Jake's face twitched in confusion. "What are you talking about, Clair?"

She giggled uncontrollably, high on a wash of adrenaline. "I took it off to wear the arms, and I forgot. It's under his autoclave."

"Doctor Octopus." His voice was a study in skepticism.

"Yeah. He kidnapped me this morning," she said casually, taking a shaking breath. The hysteria was running its course. "Made me test my Zombie Juice on him, and it worked!" She opened her eyes, taking in his expression. "I sound pretty crazy, don't I?"

"That's one word for it," he said, nodding. "What have you been taking?"

That set her off laughing again. "It's shock, I think. I'm not on any drugs. I need to go to the police."

He still didn't seem to believe her, but he was worried enough to give her a ride on his bike to the nearest station, where a bored on-duty perked up instantly at the name Doctor Octavius. Within ten minutes, she was sitting in a room with the chief of police and a large mug of hot tea, telling him everything. Except, for some reason that she couldn't identify even to herself, where she had been held. She told them that she had been in too much of a panic going both ways to note directions, which was slightly more true than a lie.

They got all excited when she told them about his 'threat' to return if his condition reverted and started making plans for protective custody and witness protection, ignoring anything she had to say about the matter. But they let her go home, eventually, with an escort to check out her apartment first and an unmarked car watching the place from the street. They even retrieved her stuff from the university, so by the time night fell, she was sitting on her couch, watching TV with Jake and his room-mate, who had appointed themselves her body-guards for the night. A comfortable numbness had interceded between her and the hysteria, and she was content to watch the Simpsons and not think at all about her day.

* * *

She had gone. She had gone and the place had gotten terribly quiet. For just an instant, Octavius felt a bizarre stab of loneliness. But it passed quickly enough when he realized the quiet would be nicely conducive to sleep. And right now, after all that had happened, his neural structure being repaired, the fights, the strange emotional roller coaster, and the illness, all he wanted to do was sleep for a week. Then maybe ... oh, knock over a bank or something, just to keep his hand in. He pushed the actuator against the floor, thus standing, and made his way out of the room. He stopped when he noticed Spider-man groggily forcing himself into consciousness on his floor. He bent forward, his hands behind his back, and looked at his foe. Spider-man sat up and looked about, finally seeing Octavius standing before him.

"Ungh.." he said. "Doc... where is she?"

"Gone," Octavius replied, walking around his foe to the other end of the room. Something white caught his eye and he approached it. "Long gone. Probably at home by now for all I know."

"You just let her go? Just like that?"

"I made a promise," was the quiet reply. He found the white thing, which turned out to be ... a brassiere. Presumably Clair's. One actuator picked it up and held it out like a dead fish. "I'm sure you can find her. Her name is Clair Watson. And when you do find her, you can give her this." The actuator flipped the bra at Spider-man, who caught it unconsciously before realizing what it was. "Now if you'll excuse me, I need sleep."

Spider-man spluttered a response, but Octavius interrupted him. "Oh, please. I'll be out for a week after all this. You can apprehend me later, there's a good boy." With that, the doctor turned and left the room.

Spider-man stood in Otto Octavius' living room, a bra in his hand, and sputtered. A door closed, presumably signaling that Octavius had gone into the bedroom to sleep. He looked about the room. The hostage had gone home. The villain had gone to bed. This had to be the strangest hostage situation he'd ever encountered, bar none. After a moment, he shrugged and left, crawling up the wall and swinging his way back into town. He had a phone book to find.

Clair never did sleep. When the sun began to come up, she extricated herself from the tangle of blankets on the couch and went to look out the window, looking first at the unmarked car below her window and then down the street, to where the sun was rising over the spires of the university. Yesterday seemed impossibly distant, though her stiff neck would attest otherwise.

Spider-man slowly climbed down the building, hoping the officers in the unmarked car wouldn't be looking up. Then again, it wasn't as though Octavius wouldn't have had a similar method of getting there. He peeked through the window and saw a vaguely familiar girl staring back at him. He hoped it was her.

She looked up to see the familiar red and black mask. "Hello," she mouthed through the glass, not wanting to wake up her 'guards' who were sound asleep in front of her TV. She opened her window. "You got away. I'm glad."

"Oh, yeah, he put up a terrible fight, but I managed to get away," Spidey replied vaguely. He dug in his spandex for a moment. "I... uhh ... don't have any pockets and really, holding this in my hand the whole time would get in the way of my webs, y'know and ... well, here." He held out the bra to her. "He, uh, gave it to me to return to you."

She blushed, and took it quickly, wadding it up and throwing it into her room. "Thank you." She looked down at the car, where the driver could be seen through the sun roof, reading a newspaper.

"Okeedokee," Spider-man said after a moment. "Well, glad to see you're unharmed... and all that. I'd better be going." He started to crawl back up the wall.

"Did you really come just to give that back?" she asked, incredulous and embarrassed.

"Uhhh, yeah, actually," he said.

"Oh," she said, subsiding. "Okay then. Thank you."

"No problem" was Spidey's reply as he disappeared from the window and crawled back up the wall.  
Clair shook her head as she closed the window and went back to the couch, kicking Jake and Bill awake. "Some body guards you are," she said, walking into the kitchen to grab a cereal bar. "Spider-Man just stopped by to bring my bra back and you slept through it."

"Eh?" mumbled Jake, rubbing sleep out of his eyes, half his hair sticking straight up. Bill was bald, so he fared better. "What are you talking about?"

"Spider-Man, here," she said around a mouthful of granola. "You, asleep."

"You are so lying this time," Jake protested, trying to smooth down his hair. "No way Spider-Man brought you your bra back."

"I wasn't lying about Octavius, was I?" she challenged. "I'm not lying about this. Now get up, get Bill up. Go home. I'll be fine here." She shooed them both out the door, locking all four deadbolts and the two chains behind them. For good measure, she locked the window, too. It had been too easy for the Spider-Man to find her: Octavius would surely have no more trouble.

* * *

A week passed, busy with interviews and a visit from some reporters from the Daily Bugle, but uneventful otherwise, and the police finally were convinced to let Clair go back to the University without an escort. It was raining heavily and she had to visit Dr. Mitchells' office, which was uptown, so she took the subway. She paid her fare and slid into a mostly empty car, taking the seat with the least amount of gum caked onto it and opening her notebook. She was still writing the informal version of her report about the first human test of the Zombie Juice, more formally called the Neuroregenesis Serum, or NRS for short. She chewed on her pen, trying to recall the precise order of events in that lab, and completely ignored the movement of passengers around her.

The subway train stopped a few more times, and a few passengers joined her in the car, one taking a seat next to her. She paid the other no heed until a strangely familiar deep voice muttered, "Simple electrical cord. The harness was bound with simple electrical cord, not conduit wire."

"Thanks," she muttered absently, correcting the mistake. Then she looked up, staring into space across the car while her brain removed itself from the pen in her hand and reconnected her ears and her memory. Then she swiveled her head sideways and up, staring straight into a pair of dark sunglasses.

"Hello, Clair," the familiar voice said coolly.

"Oh," she breathed. "Hello." She took a deep breath. "What, eh, what are you doing here?" She didn't see the actuators, but that didn't reassure her very much. He hadn't once attacked her while wearing them, after all.

"I came to find you," he said simply, looking out through the window opposite them. It didn't show much beyond their own reflections at the time, but he gazed at it nonetheless.

She looked around the car, but no one seemed to recognize him. Everyone was off in their own little world, staring out at the walls rushing past. "Why?" she asked quietly.

He still didn't look at her--or perhaps he was looking at her reflection. "There is much that you know. Perhaps... too much."

The car stopped, and two men got off. Clair stayed where she was. "I didn't even tell the police where your lab was, I swear. I'm not going to, either."

"I could simply relocate it, anyway," Octavius replied simply. "What concerns me are things that you know about me."

"I don't know anything about you that would matter," she insisted, hugging her notebook to her chest.

"Everything you know about me matters," he said quietly. "That's the problem."

She shrank in her seat. "You said you wouldn't touch me. You gave me your word."

"I did. I won't kill you."

"Then what do you want? I won't tell anyone, really. I'm not even using your name in the report. See, just Subject." She flipped it open for him to see, turning it around.

"That's a given. I'd be terribly disappointed if you'd used a name at all," he said. There was a small pause. "Your report doesn't concern me. What else would you plan to do with this information? I'm told exposes pay quite well... The ideal thing for one struggling to pay expenses."

"The Bugle offered me money for the story," she admitted. "They brought a photographer and everything. I told them that I'd think about it." She had been tempted. She was an intern, after all, which meant no time available for a paying job. Scholarships and grants only went so far.

"And?" Octavius asked. "What is your decision?" His voice dropped and he almost sounded as though he didn't want to hear the answer.

"I . . . uh, I want to," she admitted reluctantly, then hastened to explain. "I really need the money; I have rent and stuff to pay. But I won't do it, if you don't want me to."

He fell silent for a small while. Looking up at him, she could just see his eyes behind the bows of his sunglasses, lidded, the irises completely black, staring ahead in thought. "I don't," he said quietly. "I shall simply have to think of a way to prevent you revealing all that doesn't involve my harming you." He looked at her.

"I won't," she persisted. The train was still emptying, more people getting off at each stop, and no one getting in. It was her, Otto, and a scrawny man in a suit sleeping in the corner now. "I won't tell, alright? You don't need to do anything."

"You're afraid," he said. "You fear for the lives of those you love, don't you? I made no such oath not to harm them. And yet... I won't. I cannot. And I've yet to figure out why."

"There is that," she said quietly. "You won't just take my word for it?"

"Do you honestly think I've lived this long taking people's word for anything?"

"No," she agreed unhappily. "Probably not. So, what are you going to do? You trusted me to drill a hole in your head," she pointed out. "And I didn't kill you, or even leave you knocked out and run for it. You can't trust me with this?"

"Desperation can cause a man to trust a great many things and a great many people he wouldn't ordinarily trust," he replied, looking at her again.

"I even stood between you and Spider-Man, that first time when you were waking up. He offered me an easy way out, and I didn't take it." She examined his face for any sign that she was getting through to him.

"Why didn't you take it?" he asked, his voice barely audible. This really puzzled him, and worked against everything he knew of people, every experience he'd lived through of betrayal, of dishonesty. People could not be trusted, and yet....

"Because my _patient_ trusted me," she said softly. "If the patient trusts you to make sure that he comes through, you make sure he comes through safely. And that means not letting him wake up under attack. _'I will use my power to help the sick to the best of my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice. ...What I may see or hear in the course of treatment or even outside of the treatment in regard to the life of men, which on no account ought to be spread abroad, I will keep to myself, holding such things shameful to be spoken about_.' In three months, I'll make that oath in front of my whole school. But I've already taken it. It is . . . precious to me."

He stared down at her for what seemed like a very long time, his eyes, barely visible behind the shades, searching hers. Desperately searching for some kind of inconsistency, some kind of evidence of deceit he could latch onto There was none. There was nothing that clouded or obfuscated that clear gaze. Clair. Clarity, clearness, purity. It was a name that suited her. He cleared his throat and looked away, his gaze finding nothing in particular at the other end of the subway car. "Yes. That's... that's good," he said, and cleared his throat again to rid it of the strange thickness it had developed.

"Do you believe me now?" she asked, calm once more.

There was another pause. "Yes," he said, almost inaudibly.

"Good." She closed her notebook again and tucked it into her bag as the train slowed for the next stop. "Take care of yourself, Doctor."

"You ... take care as well," he said, sounding almost surprised that he was saying this. He watched her as she prepared to leave.

The train stopped. She made to step off, and looked back at him. "I suppose I'll be seeing you again?"

He folded his hands in front of him. "Most probably," he replied inscrutably.

She nodded, a small smile tugging at her lips. "Just, knock next time. Lab windows are expensive."

A smiled tugged at the corner of his mouth. "I'll bear that in mind," he replied dryly.

She got off, and the door slid shut behind her as the train sped up and away. She watched it until it was out of sight, then turned and headed up the stairs, out into the daylight.

(Author's note: LRH here again. I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who read, and especially to everyone who reviewed and to ask you all to come back soon for the sequel. Yes, there is a sequel. Have a great day!)


End file.
